Aligned Growth of Gold Nanorods in PMMA Channels: Parallel Preparation of Nanogaps

Abstract

We demonstrate alignment and positional control of gold nanorods grown <i>in situ</i> on substrates using a seed-mediated synthetic approach. Alignment control is obtained by directing the growth of spherical nanoparticle seeds into nanorods in well-defined poly(methyl methacrylate) nanochannels. Substrates with prepatterned metallic electrodes provide an additional handle for the position of the gold nanorods and yield nanometer-sized gaps between the electrode and nanorod. The presented approach is a novel demonstration of bottom-up device fabrication of multiple nanogap junctions on a single chip mediated <i>via</i> <i>in situ</i> growth of gold nanorods acting as nanoelectrodes