Morphology-Controllable Noble Metal Nanoparticles: Synthesis, Optical Property and Growth Mechanism

In the past two decades, noble metal nanoparticles have been the focus of intensive research due to their unique properties. Researchers have made many efforts to synthesize noble metals with sizes in the nanometer scale and investigated their size- and shape-dependent properties. In this article, we firstly give a brief review on recent synthesis of noble metal particles. Then we mainly discuss their growth mechanism and the relationship between the shape and optical properties. Finally, we highlight a number of potential applications of noble metal materials in some fields.