Co-assembled thin films of Ag nanowires and functional nanoparticles at the liquid-liquid interface by shaking

In this paper, we report the fabrication of co-assembled thin films composed of silver nanowires (NWs) and Au nanoparticles (NPs) at the liquid-liquid interface (water-chloroform) by vigorous shaking. The composition of co-assembled thin films can be controlled by adjusting the concentration of the nanosized building blocks. As a versatile interfacial assembly method, other nanoparticles such as Ag2S and Fe3O4 NPs can also be co-assembled with Ag NWs using the same procedure. Meanwhile, the co-assembly state of the obtained Au NPs and Ag NWs makes a significant contribution to the high sensitivity of surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) to model the molecule 3,3'-diethylthiatricarbocyanine iodide (DTTCI). The SERS intensities show high dependence on the molar ratio of Au NPs and Ag NWs and the layer number of the co-assembled thin films. This shaking-assisted liquid-liquid assembly system has been proved to be a facile way for co-assembling nanowires and nanoparticles, and will pave a way for further applications of the macroscopic co-assemblies with novel functionalities.