  Chemically synthesized single-crystalline gold microplates have been
attracting increasing interests because of their potential as high-quality gold
films for nanotechnology. We present the growth of tens of nanometer thick and
tens of micrometer large single-crystalline gold plates directly on solid
substrates by solution-phase synthesis. Compared to microplates deposited on
substrates from dispersion phase, substrate-grown plates exhibit significantly
higher quality by avoiding severe small-particle contamination and aggregation.
Substrate-grown gold plates also open new perspec-tives to study the growth
mechanism via intermittent growth and observation cycles of a large number of
individual plates. Growth models are proposed to interpret the evolution of
thickness, area and shape of plates. It is found that the plate surface remains
smooth after regrowth, implying the application of regrowth for producing giant
plates as well as unique single-crystalline nano-structures.
