Symmetry Breaking in Seed-Mediated Silver Nanorod Growth Induced by Dimethyl Sulfoxide

Engineering symmetry breaking in seed-mediated growth is a fundamental challenge to produce colloidal nanocrystals with controlled morphologies and properties. In this work, we show simple, aqueous approach the inversion of silver nanorods by restricting one end pentatwinned gold bipyramid seed. Controlled addition dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO) allows us tune both length width objects. Simulations experiments demonstrate adsorption DMSO, which displaces interfacial water, reduces binding surfactant chloride ions at surface, slows down deposition kinetics silver. Besides showing potential DMSO for controlling synthesis complex nanostructures, work opens new perspectives study physical properties noncentrosymmetric nanoparticles, e.g., their plasmon modes second-harmonic generation efficiency.