Effects of elastic anisotropy on strain distributions in decahedral gold nanoparticles.

Metallic nanoparticles exhibit exceptional optoelectronic properties with applications in plasmonics, biosensing and nanomedicine. Recently, new synthesis techniques have enabled precise control over the sizes and shapes of metal nanoparticles, occasionally leading to morphologies that cannot be properly characterized using standard techniques. An example is five-fold-twinned decahedral Au nanoparticles, which are intrinsically strained as a result of their unique geometry.