The ordered gold nanorod self-assemblies on silicon wafer were fabricated from rod and sphere mixtures by self-selective behavior. The as-prepared gold nanorod ordered packing structures show a remarkable shape dependence and prefer to pack together separately from spherical particles. This shape induced self-selective behavior was studied via a series of assemblies of nanorods with different aspect ratio. The capillary force interaction between the surfaces of nanoparticles was proposed to explain the nanorods' self-selective behavior. (c) 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.