Biomedical subjects
Publications and source records attributed to James G Worden.
Gold nanoparticle-dendrimer conjugate clusters were prepared by a covalent coupling of monofunctional gold nanoparticles with a generation 5 PAMAM dendrimer.
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Nanoparticle growth in solution is a rather complicated process governed by many thermodynamic and kinetics factors. A better understanding of nanoparticle growth kinetics is of primary importance leading to a better control on the nanoparticle size and size distribution. In this work we conducted both experimental and theoretical study on the kinetics of Brust-Schiffrin reaction for the synthesis of gold nanoparticles. Using an excessive amount of thiol ligands, the nanoparticle growth was stopped at different intermediate stages. Our study revealed and confirmed that the reproducibility of Brust-Schiffrin reaction for the synthesis of gold nanoparticles with diameters around 2 nm is rather poor due to the intrinsic complexity of this two-phase reaction. The analysis results of each intermediate product by TEM showed that nanoparticles grew very rapidly at the early stage of reaction and reached a maximum value of 2.6 nm at reaction time of around 10 minutes. Further increase of reaction time led to a decrease of nanoparticle size. In addition to the experimental study, we proposed a kinetic model for nanoparticle growth in solution by assuming that the nanoparticle core expands through incremental addition of gold atoms to the existing nanoparticle nuclei. This model not only gave a relatively good fitting to the experimental data, but also provided further insight into the nucleation and core expansion stage of the nanoparticle growth, which had not been revealed in previous modeling studies.
The optical limiting performance of a covalently bonded gold nanoparticle (approximately 2 nm)/polylysine hybrid material (AuNP-PLL) was investigated using 4.1 ns laser pulses at 532 nm. The hybrid material exhibits enhanced optical limiting in comparison to individual nanoparticles, presumably due to the interparticle electromagnetic interactions between particles in close proximity. Reverse saturable absorption and/or free carrier absorption were found to be the dominant contributor(s) to the optical limiting of the hybrid material.
Gold nanoparticles with a single carboxylic acid group on the surface were prepared from a solid phase place exchange reaction and then coupled to polylysine using an in situ activation agent, diisopropylcarbodiimide (DIPCDI). The covalent amide bond linkage between the nanoparticles and polylysine and the ring closure of the polylysine chain have led to the formation of a nanoparticle/polymer hybrid material with "nanonecklace" structures.
Gold nanoparticles offer tremendous potential in the areas of nanoelectronics, bio- and chemosensors, and catalysis. However, before these applications are realized, the surface functionality of nanoparticles must be better controlled. Our lab has recently reported a novel synthetic approach for making monofunctionalized nanoparticles through a solid phase place exchange reaction. Monofunctionalized gold nanoparticles may also be prepared through a solution phase place exchange reaction. In this study, we compared the efficiency of these two separate approaches toward controlled functionalization of gold nanoparticles by (1)H NMR, Fourier transform infrared (FT-IR), and transmission electron microscopy (TEM) analysis. We found that the solid phase place exchange approach is much more efficient at producing monofunctionalized gold nanoparticles. (1)H NMR data were used to give a semiquantitative count of substituted bifunctional ligands, and FT-IR spectra supported these findings. Furthermore, we used a diamine coupling reaction of nanoparticles to show the presence of single or multiple functional groups on the nanoparticle surface by TEM analysis.
A novel solid phase synthetic strategy was developed in this work for controlled functionalization of gold nanoparticles.