Electroless Plating of Metal Nanomaterials

Electroless plating is commonly associated with metallizing macroscopic work pieces, but also represents a surprisingly powerful nanomanufacturing tool. This review details the technique's use for creating nanomaterials of arbitrary dimensionality, ranging from nanoparticles over nanotubes, nanowires, and ultrathin films to nanostructured lattices, focusing on the solution chemistry and mechanistic aspects. The synthesis of defined nanostructures serves as overarching perspective, which is enriched by drawing connections to and insights from related fields. Strategies for controlling the size, shape, crystallinity, porosity, composition, and arrangement of electrolessly plated nanostructures are outlined, including templating (which harnesses the method's exceptional conformality to guide and limit deposit formation), the complementary approach of selective growth, tailored seeding, and bath design. Being able to strike convincing compromises between material quality and ease of preparation, electroless nanoplating has a distinct potential to facilitate the application of metal nanomaterials.