Polymer Brushes Govern Defect‐Selective Oxidative Etching of Penta‐Twinned Gold Nanorods
Tianyi Wu, Irina Koriakina, Feng Li, Zhi‐bo Yang, Yan Zhang, Zitao Chen, Da Wang, Zhihong Nie, Kun Liu, Eugenia Kumacheva · 2026
Read Polymer Brushes Govern Defect‐Selective Oxidative Etching of Penta‐Twinned Gold Nanorods by Tianyi Wu, Irina Koriakina, Feng Li, Zhi‐bo Yang, Yan Zhang, Zitao Chen, Da Wang, Zhihong Nie, Kun Liu, Eugenia Kumacheva (2026) in the Tower of Babel, a free online library of public-domain works preserved in clean, searchable text. No sign-up. The full text is served as a plain-text file at a predictable URL, where text is present: https://antarctic-labs.com/tower-of-babel/PMC13592317.txt.
Description
Wu and colleagues showed in 2026 that polymer coatings on gold nanorods actively steer how the rods are etched by oxidation. Gold nanorods are tiny rods whose light properties suit them for sensing and photonics. The team used penta-twinned rods, which contain five crystal domains and many defects, with polymer brushes grafted onto their surfaces.
Experiments and simulations showed the brushes gather etchant ions at the rod surface. That lowers the energy needed to remove gold atoms at defect-rich spots, so etching attacks defects first. Corrugations formed along the rods' long faces, a pattern absent in single-crystal rods. By tuning polymer chain length and grafting density, the team gained precise control of the etched rods' light properties. The authors establish polymer brushes as active directors of surface reactions.
Catalog record
| CREATOR | Tianyi Wu, Irina Koriakina, Feng Li, Zhi‐bo Yang, Yan Zhang, Zitao Chen, Da Wang, Zhihong Nie, Kun Liu, Eugenia Kumacheva |
|---|---|
| YEAR | 2026 |
| COLLECTION | PAPERS |
| FORMAT | TXT |
| FILE SIZE | 29 KB |
| LICENSE | https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 |
| RIGHTS | CC BY |
| SOURCE | Europe PMC |