Seeded growth of silver nanoplates with rough edges and their applications for SERS

We report a facile synthesis of silver (Ag) nanoplates with rough edges via seeded growth. The key to this success is relies on the manipulation of the competitive relationship between surface diffusion and kinetics-controlled growth. In particular, Ag atoms initially deposit on the corners and edges of seed plates and then diffuse towards the low-curvature region in a controlled way to form edges with rough features. The as-prepared Ag plate-shaped products were also tested for surface enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS), which exhibited the dependence of SERS enhancement on edge roughness. The current work offers an effective synthetic route to control the shape of Ag nanoplates and could find important use in shape-controlled synthesis of other noble metals.