Facile synthesis of gold trisoctahedral nanocrystals with controllable sizes and dihedral angles

Shape-controlled synthesis of Au nanocrystals is of paramount importance to their applications in plasmonics, catalysis, and nanomedicine. While the synthesis of Au nanocrystals enclosed by low-index facets has been greatly advanced over the past two decades, only limited progress has been made for their high-index counterparts. Here we report a robust route to the facile synthesis of Au trisoctahedral nanocrystals enclosed by high-index facets. Unlike the previously reported methods, our synthesis was conducted at room temperature, together with the introduction a new Au(iii) precursor that was much harder to reduce than AuCl4-. In the setting of seed-mediated growth, the trisoctahedral nanocrystals could be readily prepared with sizes controllable from 20-80 nm and dihedral angles tunable in the range of 120-180 degrees. We further used computational modeling to demonstrate that the surface-functionalized Au trisoctahedral nanocrystal could outperform its spherical counterpart in terms of endocytic efficacy under identical conditions.