High conversion of HAuCl4 into gold nanorods: A re-seeding approach.

Gold nanorods with varying aspect ratios have been utilized in recent years for a wide range of applications including vaccines, surface enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) substrates, and as medicinal therapeutic agents. The surfactant-directed seed mediated approach is an aqueous based protocol that produces monodisperse nanorods with controlled aspect ratios. However, an inherent problem with this approach is poor efficiency of gold conversion from HAuCl4 into nanorods.