Front Cover: Highly Tunable Growth and Etching of Silica Shells on Surfactant‐Free Gold Nanostars (ChemNanoMat 1/2020)

Both surfactant-free and six-branched gold nanostars can be fully coated by a silica shell by employing a slightly modified Stöber method. The shell can be then tunably etched by employing sodium borohydride as mild reducing agent, resulting in the partial exposure of the gold tips to the surrounding environment without alteration of their delicate tip morphology which, due to the high radius of curvature, is highly sensitive to atomic migration and reshaping, if appropriate reaction protocols are not followed. By manipulating the shell thickness, light-particle interactions can be finely modulated, making these nanostructures ideal electric field enhancers. More information can be found in the Communication by Laura Fabris et al. on page 54 in Issue 1, 2020 (DOI: 10.1002/cnma.201900459).