Synthesis and Applications of Gold Nanostructures

In recent years, gold nanostructures have emerged as a versatile platform across fields ranging from catalysis and sensing to photonics and biomedicine. Synthetic strategies span chemical reduction, seed-mediated growth, templated assembly, photochemical and biosynthetic routes, enabling precise control over size, shape and crystallinity. Morphologies include spheres, rods, stars, plates, dendrites and atomically thin two-dimensional sheets. Tailoring of reducing agents, surfactants, ligands and substrates underpins the fine tuning of optical, electronic and catalytic properties. Advances such as atomic-level etching and epitaxial growth on sacrificial substrates yield single-crystalline nanoplates and ultrathin flakes that exhibit quantum-confinement-enhanced nonlinearities and high-quality plasmonic resonances. Branched and porous architectures maximise surface area for improved catalysis and chemical sensing, while integration with microfluidic or two-dimensional material platforms offers scalable routes to highly uniform assemblies. These developments have propelled gold nanostructures to the forefront of next-generation technologies in energy conversion, environmental monitoring, biomedical imaging and nano-optical devices.

Research from Nature Portfolio

Recent studies have demonstrated the synthesis of large-area, single-crystal gold flakes with thicknesses down to a single nanometre through atomic-level precision chemical etching. These ultrathin flakes display quantised electronic states that yield over two orders of magnitude enhancement in harmonic generation compared with thicker, polycrystalline films, and support strongly confined near-infrared plasmonic resonances when patterned into nanoribbon arrays. In another approach, hierarchical gold dendrites were fabricated by sweep-potential electrodeposition in the presence of an aminosilane directing agent, affording controlled growth of trunks and branches. The resulting three-dimensional architectures exhibit markedly enhanced electrocatalytic activity for methanol oxidation and high-sensitivity glucose detection, underscoring their potential in fuel cells and biosensor applications.

Synthesis and Applications of Gold Nanostructures publication trend

The graph below shows the total number of articles in synthesis and applications of gold nanostructures across all publications each year (not limited to Nature Index journals).

Technical terms

Seed-mediated growth: A two-step protocol in which small gold seeds are first formed and then grown anisotropically into larger nanostructures by controlled addition of gold precursor and surfactant.

Plasmon resonance: Collective oscillation of conduction electrons in a metal nanostructure driven by incident light, leading to strong optical absorption or scattering at characteristic frequencies.

Sacrificial substrate: A transient template material that dictates the orientation or morphology of a growing nanostructure and is subsequently removed to release the final product.

Contact electrification: Charge separation at a solid–liquid interface under flow or irradiation, producing reactive species that can reduce metal ions without added chemical reagents.

Surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS): Amplification of Raman signals from molecules adsorbed on rough metal surfaces or nanoscale features due to intense localised plasmonic fields.

Two-dimensional gold flakes: Atomically thin crystalline gold sheets with thicknesses of a few atomic layers, exhibiting quantum-confinement effects and enhanced nonlinear optical responses.

References

1. Large area single crystal gold of single nanometer thickness for nanophotonics. Nature Communications (2024).
2. Aminosilane-Assisted Electrodeposition of Gold Nanodendrites and Their Catalytic Properties. Scientific Reports (2017).
3. Facet Control of Gold Nanoplate on Sacrificial Transition Metal Dichalcogenides. Small Methods (2025).
4. Nanogold Foundry Involving High‐Shear‐Mediated Photocontact Electrification in Water. Small Science (2024).
5. Sub‐Nanometer Thick Gold Nanosheets as Highly Efficient Catalysts. Advanced Science (2019).