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Host–guest chemistry with water-soluble gold nanoparticle supraspheres

Nature Nanotechnology volume 12, pages 170–176 (2017)Cite this article

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Abstract

The uptake of molecular guests, a hallmark of the supramolecular chemistry of cages and containers, has yet to be documented for soluble assemblies of metal nanoparticles. Here we demonstrate that gold nanoparticle-based supraspheres serve as a host for the hydrophobic uptake, transport and subsequent release of over two million organic guests, exceeding by five orders of magnitude the capacities of individual supramolecular cages or containers and rivalling those of zeolites and metal–organic frameworks on a mass-per-volume basis. The supraspheres are prepared in water by adding hexanethiol to polyoxometalate-protected 4 nm gold nanoparticles. Each 200 nm assembly contains hydrophobic cavities between the estimated 27,400 gold building blocks that are connected to one another by nanometre-sized pores. This gives a percolated network that effectively absorbs large numbers of molecules from water, including 600,000, 2,100,000 and 2,600,000 molecules (35, 190 and 234 g l−1) of para-dichorobenzene, bisphenol A and trinitrotoluene, respectively.

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Figure 1: Reaction of hex-SH with 1-protected 4 nm diameter Au NPs in water.
Figure 2: Cryo-TEM images and DLS data documenting the growth and shape of colloidal supraspheres.
Figure 3: PEG-S capping of 1-protected colloidal supraspheres in water and their disassembly on phase transfer to CH2Cl2.
Figure 4: Uptake and release of hydrophobic guests by colloidal supraspheres.
Figure 5: The hydrophobic cavities and interior pores of the colloidal supraspheres.

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  • 16 November 2016

    In the original version of this Article published online an error in production led to an incorrect chemical structure for citrate in Fig. 1a. This has been corrected in all versions of the Article.

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Acknowledgements

I.A.W thanks the Israel Science Foundation (190/13) and I.A.W. and F.S. thank the US Israel Binational Science Foundation (2008277) for support. We thank E. Gadot for TEM imaging and I. Willner for samples of TNT and RDX.

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Author notes

  1. Offer Zeiri

    Present address: Present address: Nuclear Research Center Negev, Beer-Sheva 84190, Israel,

  2. Yizhan Wang and Offer Zeiri: These authors contributed equally to this work

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Chemistry and the Ilse Katz Institute for Nanoscale Science & Technology, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beer Sheva, 84105, Israel

    Yizhan Wang, Offer Zeiri, Manoj Raula & Ira A. Weinstock

  2. Institute of Materials, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Lausanne, 1015, Switzerland

    Benjamin Le Ouay & Francesco Stellacci

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Contributions

Y.W. and O.Z. contributed equally to this work. I.A.W. initiated and directed the research, O.Z., Y.W., B.L.O., F.S. and I.A.W. designed the experiments, O.Z., Y.W., M.R. and B.L.O. carried out the experimental work, and O.Z., Y.W., B.L.O., F.S. and I.A.W. interpreted the experimental data. I.A.W. coordinated the writing of the manuscript with input from all authors.

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Correspondence to Ira A. Weinstock.

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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

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Wang, Y., Zeiri, O., Raula, M. et al. Host–guest chemistry with water-soluble gold nanoparticle supraspheres. Nature Nanotech 12, 170–176 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/nnano.2016.233

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