Surfactant-Free Colloidal Syntheses of Gold-Based Nanomaterials in Alkaline Water and Mono-alcohol Mixtures

Research output: Contribution to journalJournal articleResearchpeer-review

Documents

  • Fulltext

    Final published version, 6.96 MB, PDF document

Gold nanoparticles (Au NPs) and gold-based nanomaterials combine unique properties relevant for medicine, imaging, optics, sensing, catalysis, and energy conversion. While the Turkevich-Frens and Brust-Schiffrin methods remain the state-of-the-art colloidal syntheses of Au NPs, there is a need for more sustainable and tractable synthetic strategies leading to new model systems. In particular, stabilizers are almost systematically used in colloidal syntheses, but they can be detrimental for fundamental and applied studies. Here, a surfactant-free synthesis of size-controlled colloidal Au NPs stable for months is achieved by the simple reduction of HAuCl4 at room temperature in alkaline solutions of low-viscosity mono-alcohols such as ethanol or methanol and water, without the need for any other additives. Palladium (Pd) and bimetallic AuxPdy NPs, nanocomposites and multimetallic samples, are also obtained and are readily active (electro)catalysts. The multiple benefits over the state-of-the-art syntheses that this simple synthesis bears for fundamental and applied research are highlighted.

Original languageEnglish
JournalChemistry of Materials
Volume35
Issue number5
Pages (from-to)2173−2190
Number of pages18
ISSN0897-4756
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2023

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
J.Q. acknowledges the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under Marie Skłodowska-Curie Grant Agreement 840523 (CoSolCat). M.E.-E. and K.D.J. thank the Independent Research Fund Denmark for the award of a DFF-Research Project 1 grant (9041-00224B). The authors are grateful to the Villum Foundation for financial support through a Villum Young Investigator grant (VKR00015416). Funding from the Danish Ministry of Higher Education and Science through the SMART Lighthouse is gratefully acknowledged. The Danish Research Council (DanScatt) is acknowledged for covering travel expenses for the synchrotron experiments. The authors acknowledge MAX IV Laboratory for time on DanMAX under Proposal 20200731. Research conducted at MAX IV, a Swedish national user facility, is supported by the Swedish Research council under Contract 2018-07152, the Swedish Governmental Agency for Innovation Systems under Contract 2018-04969, and Formas under Contract 2019-02496. DanMAX is funded by NUFI Grant 4059-00009B.

Publisher Copyright:
© 2023 The Authors. Published by American Chemical Society.

ID: 339622849