Neus G. Bastús, Joan Comenge, and Víctor Puntes
Langmuir, 2011, 27 (17), pp 11098–11105
http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/la201938u
Abstract
Monodisperse citrate-stabilized gold nanoparticles with a uniform quasi-spherical shape of up to ∼200 nm and a narrow size distribution were synthesized following a kinetically controlled seeded growth strategy via the reduction of HAuCl4 by sodium citrate. The inhibition of any secondary nucleation during homogeneous growth was controlled by adjusting the reaction conditions: temperature, gold precursor to seed particle concentration, and pH. This method presents improved results regarding the traditional Frens method in several aspects: (i) it produces particles of higher monodispersity; (ii) it allows better control of the gold nanoparticle size and size distribution; and (iii) it leads to higher concentrations. Gold nanoparticles synthesized following this method can be further functionalized with a wide variety of molecules, hence this method appears to be a promising candidate for application in the fields of biomedicine, photonics, and electronics, among others.
