New Insights on the Growth of Anisotropic Nanoparticles from Total Energy Calculations

The growth mechanism of anisotropic metallic nanoparticles is still an open and polemical question. The common observation of the existence of nonspherical (not the most stable) shapes in varied experimental conditions is not fully understood. In this work, based on results from total energy calculations for different shapes and sizes of Ag nanoparticles, we provide new insights of why anisotropic structures are commonly found in different preparation conditions. We show that, assuming the presence of a particle shape distribution in the beginning of the growth process, anisotropic nanoparticles can preferentially grow over spherical ones due to the fact that the energy required to build larger anisotropic structures could be less than the one required to build isotropic structures. These results suggest that many previous works in literature shall be revisited accordingly to these new finds.