Technical Note: Synthesis and Characterization of Anisotropic Gold Nanoparticles

Anisotropic gold nanoparticles were synthesized in a simple, environmentally benign process under ambient conditions of temperature and atmospheric pressure using bovine serum albumin (BSA) as both the reductant and biotemplate. Two types of anisotropic nanoparticles were produced in the system, namely larger two dimensional plates and smaller three-dimensional nanoparticles. Since the characteristics of nanoparticles are largely determined by their morphology, a simple centrifugation step was included to roughly separate the larger plate-like particles from the smaller more compact particles. In an attempt to identify potential applications, the properties of the particles were determined by TEM, SEM, STEM-EDS, UV-Vis spectroscopy and photoluminescence. The results of this study identified several optical properties of gold nanoparticles.