Microorganism-assisted synthesis of Au/Pd/Ag nanowires

•Facile one-pot microorganism mediated synthesis of Au/Pd/Ag NWs.•The Au/Pd/Ag NWs possess well-defined morphology and large length-diameter ratio.•The PPCs and CTAB play important roles in the formation of Au/Pd/Ag NWs.

Well-defined Au/Pd/Ag nanowires (NWs) that are difficult to synthesize via pure chemical reduction method are fabricated using a facile one-pot microorganism-mediated method in the presence of hexadecyltrimethylammonium bromide (CTAB). The result showed that the formation of Au/Pd/Ag NWs were strongly dependent on the mass of Pichia pastoris cells (PPCs) and CTAB concentration of the reaction solution. The PPCs acted as templates in the formation of Au/Pd/Ag NWs, and an appropriate concentration of CTAB was favor of anisotropic growth during the NWs formation procedure. This work exhibits a novel method to fabricate multi-metallic nanostructures by combining a surfactant and microorganisms.