Search results for " NANO"

Facile synthesis of a monolith of silicon nanocrystal embedded in silica

2013

Towards Controlled Synthesis of Water-Soluble Gold Nanoclusters : Synthesis and Analysis

2019

Water-soluble gold nanoclusters with well-defined molecular structures and stability possess particular biophysical properties making them excellent candidates for biological applications as well as for fundamental spectroscopic studies. The currently existing synthetic protocols for atomically monodisperse thiolate-protected gold nanoclusters (AuMPCs) have been widely expanded with organothiolates, yet the direct synthesis reports for water-soluble AuMPCs are still deficient. Here, we demonstrate a wet-chemistry pH-controlled synthesis of two large water-soluble nanoclusters utilizing p-mercaptobenzoic acid (pMBA), affording different sizes of plasmonic AuMPCs on the preparative scale (∼7 …

A route to simple nonionic surfactants

2016

AbstractA method for the synthesis of nonionic surfactants – N-alkyl-O-(2-hydroxyethyl) carbamates is proposed by acylation of fatty amines with ethylene carbonate without any solvent or catalyst. The surface tension of the prepared surfactants was measured, toxicity and biodegradability were determined for the surfactant with n-dodecyl as a hydrophobic group and N-monosubstituted amide and hydroxyl groups for their hydrophilic part.

Isophorone on Au/MgO/Ag(001) : Physisorption with Electrostatic Site Selection

2017

We report a computational study of isophorone C9H14O adsorption on a Ag(001)-supported ultrathin MgO film with Au adatoms and clusters employing density functional theory calculations. The calculations show that the keto form of isophorone is more stable than the enol tautomers both in gas phase and on the MgO/Ag(001) surface. The interaction between the keto isophorone and step and terrace sites of MgO/Ag(001) displays long interaction distances, relatively weakly exothermic adsorption energies, lack of charge transfer, and minor changes in the density of states, all of which indicate that the molecule merely physisorbs on the surface. The step sites are energetically preferred adsorption …

Jahn–Teller effects in Au25(SR)18

2016

The relationship between oxidation state, structure, and magnetism in many molecules is well described by first-order Jahn–Teller distortions. This relationship is not yet well defined for ligated nanoclusters and nanoparticles, especially the nano-technologically relevant gold-thiolate protected metal clusters. Here we interrogate the relationships between structure, magnetism, and oxidation state for the three stable oxidation states, −1, 0 and +1 of the thiolate protected nanocluster Au25(SR)18. We present the single crystal X-ray structures of the previously undetermined charge state Au25(SR)18+1, as well as a higher quality single crystal structure of the neutral compound Au25(SR)180. …

Molecule-like photodynamics of Au102(pMBA)44 nanocluster.

2015

Photophysical properties of a water-soluble cluster Au102(pMBA)44 (pMBA = para-mercaptobenzoic acid) are studied by ultrafast time-resolved mid-IR spectroscopy and density functional theory calculations in order to distinguish between molecular and metallic behavior. In the mid-IR transient absorption studies, visible or near-infrared light is used to electronically excite the sample, and the subsequent relaxation is monitored by studying the transient absorption of a vibrational mode in the ligands. Based on these studies, a complete picture of energy relaxation dynamics is obtained: (1) 0.5-1.5 ps electronic relaxation, (2) 6.8 ps vibrational cooling, (3) intersystem crossing from the low…

Total Structure and Electronic Structure Analysis of Doped Thiolated Silver [MAg24(SR)18]2– (M = Pd, Pt) Clusters

2015

With the incorporation of Pd or Pt atoms, thiolated Ag-rich 25-metal-atom nanoclusters were successfully prepared and structurally characterized for the first time. With a composition of [PdAg24(SR)18](2-) or [PtAg24(SR)18](2-), the obtained 25-metal-atom nanoclusters have a metal framework structure similar to that of widely investigated Au25(SR)18. In both clusters, a M@Ag12 (M = Pd, Pt) core is capped by six distorted dimeric -RS-Ag-SR-Ag-SR- units. However, the silver-thiolate overlayer gives rise to a geometric chirality at variance to Au25(SR)18. The effect of doping on the electronic structure was studied through measured optical absorption spectra and ab initio analysis. This work d…

A Unified AMBER-Compatible Molecular Mechanics Force Field for Thiolate-Protected Gold Nanoclusters.

2016

We present transferable AMBER-compatible force field parameters for thiolate-protected gold nanoclusters. Five different sized clusters containing both organo-soluble and water-soluble thiolate ligands served as test systems in MD simulations, and parameters were validated against DFT and experimental results. The cluster geometries remain intact during the MD simulations in various solvents, and structural fluctuations and energetics showed agreement with DFT calculations. Experimental diffusion coefficients and crystal structures were also reproduced with sufficient accuracy. The presented parameter set contains the minimum number of cluster-specific parameters enabling the use of these p…

Fractal dynamics in chaotic quantum transport

2013

Despite several experiments on chaotic quantum transport in two-dimensional systems such as semiconductor quantum dots, corresponding quantum simulations within a real-space model have been out of reach so far. Here we carry out quantum transport calculations in real space and real time for a two-dimensional stadium cavity that shows chaotic dynamics. By applying a large set of magnetic fields we obtain a complete picture of magnetoconductance that indicates fractal scaling. In the calculations of the fractality we use detrended fluctuation analysis -- a widely used method in time series analysis -- and show its usefulness in the interpretation of the conductance curves. Comparison with a s…

Symmetry breaking in ligand-protected gold clusters probed by nonlinear optics

2016

The first hyperpolarizabilities of [Au25(SR)18](-1/0) and Au38(SR)24 clusters were determined by Hyper-Rayleigh Scattering. A strong dependence on the molecular symmetry was observed, and we explore two strategies to destroy the center of inversion in [Au25(SR)18](-1/0), protection by chiral ligands and alloying of the cluster with silver. This may open new avenues to applications of Au : SR clusters in second-order nonlinear optics.