Recent years have seen an exponential boom in the time and resources dedicated to research in the field of gold nanoparticle chemistry. The synthetically diverse morphologies of gold nanoparticles as well as the increased usage in commercial products have made them ideal candidates for research laboratories. In this work, the Layer-by-Layer deposition of polyelectrolytes onto the surface of CTAB capped gold nanoparticles is explored. One central theme to this work is to quantify the number of polyelectrolyte chains per nanoparticle. Nanoparticle concentration will be quantified using UV-Vis spectroscopy and the polyelectrolyte adsorption will be quantified using ICP-OES after extensive purification. Preliminary results have indicated that the number of polymers chain adsorbed to the surface of the gold nanoparticle remains almost constant regardless of the alkali cation used. This has then served as the basis for the development of new avenues of experimentation. A continuation of this project now looks to see if the number of PSS polymers adsorbed can be altered by using a secondary polymer to “trap” more to the surface of the gold nanoparticles.

Using layer-by-layer deposition to “trap” polyelectrolytes on gold nanoparticles

255th National Meeting (2018)

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