Effect of Ligands on the Stability of Gold Nanoclusters

How chemical groups affect gold nanocluster stability

29 April 2023

Knowing how coating gold nanoclusters with chemical groups affects their stability will help inform their use as catalysts and biosensors.

Consisting of between several to hundreds of gold atoms, gold nanoclusters are promising for a wide range of applications, including drug delivery, catalysis and bioimaging.

Their tiny size makes them inherently unstable and they need to be coated with chemical groups to prevent them from bunching together. However, little is known about how the interactions of the chemical groups affect their 3D arrangement and stability on nanocluster surfaces.

Now, a team led by a researcher from the University of La Laguna has conducted calculations to explore how the interactions affect structure and stability for gold nanoclusters containing 25 and 144 gold atoms.

The findings provide a tool for predicting how ultrasmall cores of gold atoms interact with the environment, a substrate and themselves, the researchers say.

Supported content

References

1. The Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters 13, 6475−6480 (2022). doi: 10.1021/acs.jpclett.2c01616