Gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) have varying applications including but not limited to plasmonic solar cells, photocatalysis, and photothermal heating. These applications are built on the electronic properties of the nanoparticles, which arise from their electronic structure and which can be controlled by ligand identity, ligand size, size of the particle, and more. The electronic change in these particles continues to be a topic of perennial interest. While much focus has been given to the evolution of the plasmon with size, this is not a direct measure of their electronic structure. We present work in which we use measurements of Pauli paramagnetism to directly probe the change in the density of electronic states with particle size. This is in an attempt to characterize where the electronic properties of AuNPs become one in the same with bulk gold. AuNPs were synthesized from gold salt (AuHCl<sub>4</sub>) and octanethiol. Their size and paramagnetism were measured with TEM and Evans method NMR, respectively. We then discuss the dependence of the electronic structure upon the size of the metal core.

Characterization of the size dependency of electronic properties of gold nanoparticles

ACS Spring 2022

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