Aqueous-phase synthesis of silver nanoplates: Enhancing lateral growth via a heat-up process

This Letter describes a simple, aqueous-phase route to synthesize Ag nanoplates with enhanced lateral sizes via a heat-up method. By slowly heating an aqueous solution containing both AgNO3 and PVP, we were able to produce Ag nanoplates with an average lateral size larger than 1 μm. Electron microscopy analyses revealed that in the heat-up synthesis, Ag nanoplates could grow into large sizes due to continued generation and deposition of Ag atoms during the heat-up procedure. Our results suggest that it is possible to enhance anisotropic growth of metal nanostructures by using a simple heat-up process.