Novel ligands can be designed to target specific nanoparticle (NP) properties and applications creating exciting opportunities for nanotechnology research. Flexibility in ligand design can allow for tuning of a variety of properties such as colloidal or chemical stability, or engineer the magnetic, optical, catalytic, and electronic behavior of the particles or their assemblies.<br/>To this end, a series of dendritic ligands have been designed to control NP assembly in thin films. These dendritic ligands exhibit a “softness” where the organic shell around the NP is flexible enough to accommodate differences in NP size and shape. The bulk that the ligands provide also increases the effective NP size, where combinations of ligands and NPs of different sizes and shapes can be combined to create NP films of ordered assemblies, resulting in substitutional doping. Self-assembly of anisotropic particles can also be tuned, where the interparticle spacing is dependent on the dendritic ligand on the surface of the NP. Multilayer assemblies exhibit this dependence as well, and ongoing research in this area will be discussed.<br/>Additionally, our dendritic ligands provide increased NP stability, where the organic shell that is created around the NP most likely forms a dense close-packed structure that effectively protects the inorganic core compared with commercially available stabilizers. This leads to increase in NP lifetime in solution across multiple solvents, which is critical for the commercial viability of NPs.<br/>All dendrimer-NP hybrids were studied using various analytical techniques such as TEM, NMR, IR, and TGA. The synthetic approach, dendrimer-NP assembly, and property characteristics will be discussed.

Design and applications of dendritic ligands for nanoparticle stability, assembly, and property tuning

256th National Meeting (2018)

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