Shape controlled growth of gold nanoparticles by a solution synthesis.

The shape of gold nanoparticles has been successfully tuned among penta-twinned decahedrons, truncated tetrahedrons, cubes, octahedrons, hexagonal thin plates by introducing a small amount of salt into a N,N-dimethylformamide (DMF) solution containing poly(vinyl pyrrolidone) (PVP), and changing the temperature or the concentration of the gold precursor.