Fragmentation of gold flowers into nanopetals by high energy electron irradiation

Gold nanoflowers were obtained by reducing chloroauric acid with tri-sodium citrate at a temperature of 95 °C. The UV–vis spectroscopy and scanning electron microscopy techniques were employed to monitor the growth of gold nanoflowers. The size and shape of the nanocrystallites of gold in the flowers were determined by X-ray diffraction and transmission electron microscopy methods. The 3-dimensional gold nanoflowers got fragmented into 2-dimensional petal-like nanostructures upon irradiation with 6-MeV electrons. The average size of crystallites of gold after electron beam irradiation was found to be ∼10 nm.