Publications Details

Oriented gold nanorod arrays: self-assembly and optoelectronic applications

Fan, Hongyou F.; Wei, Wenbo; Bai, Feng

We present that self-assembly of anisotropic plasmonic nanomaterials into ordered superstructures has become popular in nanoscience because of their unique anisotropic optical and electronic properties. Gold nanorods (GNRs) are a well-defined functional building block for fabrication of these superstructures. They possess important anisotropic plasmonic characteristics that are resulted from strong local electric field and responsive to visible and near infrared light, which attracts extensive attention in various fields, such as biomedical technologies, plasmon-enhanced spectroscopies, and optoelectronic devices. There are recent examples of assembling the GNRs into ordered arrays or superstructures through processes such as solvent evaporation, interfacial assembly. In this review, we describe recent progresses in the development of the self-assembled GNR arrays with focus on the formation of oriented GNR arrays on substrates. We discuss key driving forces such as van der Waals (vdW), electrostatic interactions, steric force, and depletion force. We survey different strategies and self-assembly processes of forming oriented GNR arrays. Lastly, we also overview the applications of the oriented GNR arrays in optoelectronic devices especially surface enhanced Raman scattering (SERS). At the end of this review, we briefly summarize the review and discuss future challenges and perspectives.