Gold Nanoparticles of Multiple Shapes Synthesized in L-Tryptophan Aqueous Solution

In this paper, we describe a simple and efficient synthesis of gold nanoparticles(GNPs) of various shapes(spherical, rod-like, hexagonal, truncated triangular, and triangular) using Au(Ⅲ) reduction in aqueous solutions by L-tryptophan. We evaluated the influences of reaction temperature, foreign metal ions Ag(Ⅰ), and surfactants of nonionic(polyethylene glycol, PEG), anionic(sodium dodecyl sulfate, SDS), and cationic(cetyltrimethyl ammonium bromide, CTAB) on GNPs synthesis. We characterized the resultant GNPs using UV–visible adsorption spectroscopy, transmission electron microscopy/high-resolution transmission electron microscopy, scanning electron microscopy, X-ray diffraction, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, selected-area electron diffraction, and Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy. We fabricated the variously sized GNPs by controlling the rate of the reduction of gold ions in aqueous solution by varying the reaction temperature: the higher the temperature, the smaller the gold nanospheres. We found the existence of Ag(Ⅰ) to reinforce the reduction of Au(Ⅲ) and to correspond with the appearance of some amorphous bimetallic Au/Ag nanoparticles. Additionally, we found the presence of surfactants to greatly influence the shape of the formed GNPs, especially the presence of CTAB, which results in the anisotropic growth of gold nanocrystals into hexagonal, truncated triangular, and triangular nanoplates. In addition, with the increase in CTAB concentration, we found the amount of gold nanoplates to first increase and then decrease. Finally, we performed preliminary explorations of the reduction process and morphological evolution to propose possible corresponding reduction and morphological evolution pathways.