Gold nanostructures have attracted considerable attention in recent research due to their wide applications in various fields such as material science, physical science, electrical engineering, and biomedical engineering. Researchers have developed many methods for synthesizing different kinds of gold nanostructures, where the sizes and surface chemistry of the nanostructures are considered to be the two key factors. Traditionally, the sizes of nanostructures are determined by electron microscopy while the surface chemistry is investigated by optical spectroscopies such as IR spectroscopy and Raman spectroscopy. Compared with those techniques, Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) spectroscopy offers a more advanced and convenient tool for size determination and surface chemistry investigation by combining one and multiple dimensional NMR spectroscopy and diffusion-order NMR spectroscopy. NMR spectroscopy is a powerful tool for obtaining structural information of materials at molecular/atomic level and it has been frequently used in synthetic chemistry and molecular biology. Here, we show a proof-of-concept that NMR spectroscopy can be applied to characterize thiol-protected gold nanostructures, including size determination, surface chemistry investigation and structure study. Furthermore, we establish a general method for people to characterize nanostructures using NMR spectroscopy.

Probing the surface chemistry of ligand capped gold nanostructures by nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy

251st National Meeting (2016)

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