Observation of surface relaxation surface steps and surface reconstructionin gold nanorods

In this paper, it is reported a surface analysis of gold nanorods irradiate d by the electron beam of a transmission electron microscope. The gold nano rods were synthesised by a bioreduction process. A transmission electron mi croscope was used to obtain high resolution images of the nanorod structure , which were digitally processed in order to identify the facets and surfac e changes. Besides, molecular simulation tools were also applied to obtain a model and to analyse the stability of these structures. Evidences of dist ortions were observed the (111) and (110) surfaces, which include facet rec onstruction and it is shown the necessity to include the twinning of the lo ng nanorods that looks to be a very common case. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.