Deposition of Gold Nanotriangles in Large Scale Close-Packed Monolayers for X-ray-Based Temperature Calibration and SERS Monitoring of Plasmon-Driven Catalytic Reactions

Anisotropic plasmonic particles such as gold nanotriangles have extraordinary structural, optical, and physicochemical properties. For many applications in different fields, it is essential to prepare them in a chemically and physically stable, structurally well-defined manner, e.g., as large and uniform coverage on a substrate. We present a direct method for the large scale close-packed monolayer formation of edge-to-edge ordered, ultrathin crystalline gold nanotriangles on Si wafers or quartz glass via the transfer of these asymmetric particles to the air-liquid interface after adding ethanol-toluene mixtures without any subsequent surface functionalization. X-ray diffraction monitoring of the close-packed, large area monolayer with a mosaicity of less than 0.1° allows for calibrating the temperature of the particles during continuous laser heating. This is important for characterizing the microscopic temperature of the metal particles in the plasmon-driven dimerization process of 4-nitrothiophenol (4-NTP) into 4,4'-dimercaptoazobenzene (DMAB), monitored in real time by surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS). The gold nanotriangles can act as a source of hot electrons and initiate the dimerization process.