Heating or cooling: temperature effects on the synthesis of atomically precise gold nanoclusters

Chen, Tiankai and Yao, Qiaofeng and Yuan, Xun and Nasaruddin, Ricca Rahman and Xie, Jianping (2017) Heating or cooling: temperature effects on the synthesis of atomically precise gold nanoclusters. The Journal of Physical Chemistry C, 121 (20). pp. 10743-10751. ISSN 1932-7447

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Abstract

Developing an efficient, well-controlled synthesis strategy for gold nanoclusters (Au NCs) is crucial for delivering their expected applications in many fields; and such development requires fundamental understandings on the synthetic chemistry. The synthesis of Au NCs typically consists of a pair of reversible reactions: a fast reduction-growth reaction and a slow size-focusing reaction. Here we demonstrate that the above two reactions can be well-balanced while accelerated in a heated synthesis protocol, thus providing an efficient and scalable synthesis method to obtain thermodynamically favorable Au25(SR)18 NCs (SR denotes thiolate ligand) with high yield (>95% on gold atom basis) and fast kinetics. By investigating the Au NC formation behavior at different temperature, we identified the endothermic nature of the reductive formation of Au25(SR)18 NCs from Au(I)-thiolate complex precursors. More interestingly, if overheated, after the formation of Au25(SR)18, there exists an irreversible first-order reaction, which could transform Au25(SR)18 into Au NCs of mixed sizes. As a result, 40 °C is identified as the optimal temperature to synthesize Au25(SR)18 in aqueous solution, as the half-life of the transformation reaction (67.8 h) is much longer than the time needed to obtain high yield Au25(SR)18. The detailed understandings on the temperature effects of Au NC synthesis would facilitate the development of efficient synthesis strategies for atomically precise Au NCs with predesigned size, composition and structure.

Item Type:	Article (Journal)
Additional Information:	8629/69309
Uncontrolled Keywords:	Heating or cooling, temperature effects
Subjects:	Q Science > QD Chemistry T Technology > TP Chemical technology > TP155 Chemical engineering
Kulliyyahs/Centres/Divisions/Institutes (Can select more than one option. Press CONTROL button):	Kulliyyah of Engineering > Department of Biotechnology Engineering Kulliyyah of Engineering
Depositing User:	Dr Ricca Rahman Nasaruddin
Date Deposited:	19 Jun 2019 10:59
Last Modified:	19 Jun 2019 10:59
URI:	http://irep.iium.edu.my/id/eprint/69309

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