UC Riverside

Silver nanostructures feature interesting optical properties due to their strong and tunable localized surface plasmon resonance. This paper studies the synthesis of silver nanospheres and their self-assembly into photonic crystals. Specifically, silver nanospheres are grown from seeds enclosed in uniform resorcinol-formaldehyde (RF) hollow nanoshells. The size and morphology of the silver nanoparticles can be controlled by the amount of silver precursor. The full-grown silver nanoparticles are near-spherical, with size determined by that of the RF templates, which can be controlled by starting with silica cores of defined diameters. The as-synthesized Ag@RF nanospheres can be assembled into colloidal photonic crystals to display bright diffractions at various wavelengths.