Electrodeposition of Au Nanowires via Amine Ligand-Induced Active Surface Growth

Amine ligands have been widely applied as morphology-directing reagents in nanostructure synthesis. In this work, we explored the application of the amine ligands in the active surface growth mechanism in place of the strong thiolated ligands. Despite being weaker compared to the thiols, amine ligands such as aniline were also shown to be capable of facilitating the template-less electrodeposition of Au nanowires (NWs) on the substrate via the active surface growth mechanism. Given the close binding difference between the amine-grafted substrate and the ligands, substrate functionalization becomes critically important for effective construction of the active surface and the growth of the nanowires. Additionally, the growth with the amine ligands took place at more positive reduction potentials and is less prone to splitting and bundle formation. A systematic generality study revealed that besides the aromatic amines, long-chain aliphatic amines were also capable of facilitating nanowire growth. Given the weak binding affinity of the amine ligands, the Au NWs are readily accessible for further processing to generate sophisticated one-dimensional structures. As a demonstration, tandem electrodeposition was performed to directly obtain coaxial core–shell Au@Pt NWs with adjustable length, diameter, and shell thickness.