This project was concerned with the design and fabrication of asymmetric nanoparticles with desirable magnetic and optical properties, to be used as reporter particles in a bio-diagnostic system. This diagnostic system has certain criteria as to how the reporter particles' properties must be so that they are of use. Throughout this project several chemical processes have been explored for producing nanoparticles with an elongated dimension so that they are of a rod or wire shape. A large part of the work has centered on producing iron oxide rod cores to provide the magnetic component, and then with subsequent coating of gold and silver nanoparticles to provide the optical properties required. The magnetic properties of the core have attempted to be manipulated by use of a co-precipitation synthesis to dope the lattice with transition metals. Digestive
ripening, iterative coating of noble metals and interface coating are three of the synthetic routes that have been explored to coat the produced cores with gold and silver. We have also looked at two alternative routes to producing surrogate reporter nanoparticles with inherently dierent properties. One of which was using the so-called Polyol reduction method to producing a silver-nickel composite nanowire. The second was a hydrogenation reduction of cobalt precursors, with a subsequent gold coating. The nickel and cobalt components of these alternatives provide the magnetic part, with noble metals again fullling the optical requirements. The resulting particles synthesised in these experiments have subsequently been analysed through a variety of analytical techniques, to characterise their structural, morphological, magnetic and optical properties. The best candidate particles were tested for their applicability to the target bio-diagnostic magneto-optic system.