Synthesis of Monodisperse Single Crystalline Ag Microcubes via Seed-Mediated Growth

A multitude of complex-shaped nano- and microparticles have been synthesized due to their interesting size- and shape-dependent properties. However, a number of applications require reliable methods for making nonspherical particles from the nanoscale up to the microscale. Shape control of metal nanoparticles has been studied extensively by utilizing their preferred growth normal to low-surface-energy planes, but their size is typically limited to less than a few hundred nanometers. Here, we report a method to control the size of cubic Ag single crystals in a broad range from 100 nm to 2 mu m while maintaining flat faces and sharp edges and vertices. To our knowledge, this is the first report on synthesis of monodisperse nonspherical single crystals from the nano- to micrometer scale, which enables an exploration of size- and shape-dependent behaviors of materials.