Search results for "gold"
showing 10 items of 1320 documents
Novel Method of Preparation of Gold-Nanoparticle-Doped TiO2 and SiO2 Plasmonic Thin Films: Optical Characterization and Comparison with Maxwell-Garne…
2011
SiO2 and TiO2 thin films with gold nanoparticles (NPs) are of particular interest as photovoltaic materials. A novel method for the preparation of spin-coated SiO2–Au and TiO2–Au nanocomposites is presented. This fast and inexpensive method, which includes three separate stages, is based on the in situ synthesis of both the metal-oxide matrix and the Au NPs during a baking process at relatively low temperature. It allows the formation of nanocomposite thin films with a higher concentration of Au NPs than other methods. High-resolution transmission electron microscopy studies revealed a homogeneous distribution of NPs over the film volume along with their narrow size distribution. The optica…
Mapping the polarization pattern of plasmon modes reveals nanoparticle symmetry.
2008
We study the wavelength and polarization dependent plasmon resonances of single silver and gold nanorods, triangles, cubes, and dimers with a novel single particle spectroscopy method (RotPOL). In RotPOL, a rotating wedge-shaped polarizer encodes the full polarization information of each particle within one image. This reveals the symmetry of the particles and their plasmon modes, allows analyzing inhomogeneous samples and the monitoring of particle shape changes during growth in situ.
Conformational Changes and Charge Transfer in Biomolecules Resolved Using Dynamic Enhanced Raman Correlation Spectroscopy
2019
International audience; In this contribution, we report that conforma-tional changes of molecules that are often buried in a wide-distributed Gaussian distribution can be discerned by analyzing the dynamics of specific Raman lines. We investigate the pertinence of the auto-and cross-correlation functions applied to the dynamics of three Raman lines of an amino acid, the tryptophan. The cross-correlation between intensity and the Raman band is an indicator of the charge transfer during the diffusion limited reaction of tryptophan and the gold surface. The Pećlet number Pe can provide a valuable indicator of the convective and/or diffusive features of each Raman band. Adsorption induced confo…
Toxicity of gold-nanoparticles: Synergistic effects of shape and surface functionalization on micromotility of epithelial cells
2010
Nanoparticle exposure is monitored by a combination of two label-free and non-invasive biosensor devices which detect cellular shape and viscoelasticity (quartz crystal microbalance), cell motility and the dynamics of epithelial cell-cell contacts (electric cell-substrate impedance sensing). With these tools we have studied the impact of nanoparticle shape on cellular physiology. Gold (Au) nanoparticles coated with CTAB were synthesized and studied in two distinct shapes: Spheres with a diameter of (43 ± 4) nm and rods with a size of (38 ± 7) nm × (17 ± 3) nm. Dose-response experiments were accompanied by conventional cytotoxicity tests as well as fluorescence and dark-field microscopy to v…
A new approach to assess gold nanoparticle uptake by mammalian cells: combining optical dark-field and transmission electron microscopy.
2012
Toxicological effects of nanoparticles are associated with their internalization into cells. Hence, there is a strong need for techniques revealing the interaction between particles and cells as well as quantifying the uptake at the same time. For that reason, herein optical dark-field microscopy is used in conjunction with transmission electron microscopy to investigate the uptake of gold nanoparticles into epithelial cells with respect to shape, stabilizing agent, and surface charge. The number of internalized particles is strongly dependent on the stabilizing agent, but not on the particle shape. A test of metabolic activity shows no direct correlation with the number of internalized par…
Antenna Tapering Strategy for Near-Field Enhancement Optimization in Terahertz Gold Nanocavities
2019
Plasmonic nanoantennas (NAs) have received a growing attention in recent years due to their ability to confine light on sub-wavelength dimensions [1]. More recently, this property has been exploited in the terahertz (THz) frequency range (0.1–10 THz) for enhanced sensing and spectroscopy [2], as well as for more fundamental investigations [3]. These applications typically require high local electric fields that can be achieved by concentrating THz radiation into deeply sub-wavelength volumes located at the NAs extremities. However, the achievable near-field enhancement values are severely limited by the poor resonance quality factor of traditional rod-shaped THz NAs. Unlike what is commonly…
Cancer phototherapy in living cells by multiphoton release of doxorubicin from gold nanospheres
2020
Doxorubicin is a widely used but toxic cancer chemotherapeutic agent. In order to localize its therapeutic action and minimize side effects, it was covalently conjugated to peptide-encapsulated gold nanospheres by click-chemistry and then photo-released in a controlled fashion by a multiphoton process. Selective treatment of a chosen region in a 2D layer of U2Os cancer cells is shown by driving photorelease with 561 nm irradiation at mu W power. These results show promising directions for the development of practical applications based on nanocarriers that can ensure drug delivery with high spatial and temporal control.
Regenerable ZnO/GaAs Bulk Acoustic Wave Biosensor for Detection of Escherichia coli in “Complex” Biological Medium
2021
A regenerable bulk acoustic wave (BAW) biosensor is developed for the rapid, label-free and selective detection of Escherichia coli in liquid media. The geometry of the biosensor consists of a GaAs membrane coated with a thin film of piezoelectric ZnO on its top surface. A pair of electrodes deposited on the ZnO film allows the generation of BAWs by lateral field excitation. The back surface of the membrane is functionalized with alkanethiol self-assembled monolayers and antibodies against E. coli. The antibody immobilization was investigated as a function of the concentration of antibody suspensions, their pH and incubation time, designed to optimize the immunocapture of bacteria. The perf…
Narrowing the Plasmonic Sensitivity Distribution by Considering the Individual Size of Gold Nanorods
2018
The plasmonic nanoparticle sensitivity, sensing volume, and the signal-to-noise ratio are strongly dependent on the nanoparticle dimensions. It is difficult to chemically produce or purify nanoparticles with a size variation of less than 10%. This size variation induces a systematic error in sensing experiments that can be reduced when the exact size of each individual nanoparticle is known. In this work, we show how the size of gold nanorods can be estimated directly from the optical spectra of single nanoparticles by using the increase of radiation damping with the nanoparticle size. We verify our approach by comparing these spectrally estimated sizes with the precise sizes of exactly the…
High-Temperature Stable Gold Nanoparticle Catalysts for Application under Severe Conditions: The Role of TiO2 Nanodomains in Structure and Activity
2015
Metal nanoparticles with precisely controlled size are highly attractive for heterogeneous catalysis. However, their poor thermal stability remains a major concern in their application at realistic operating conditions. This paper demonstrates the possibility of synthesizing gold nanoparticles with exceptional thermal stability. This has been achieved by using a simple conventional deposition–precipitation technique. The material employed as catalyst consists of gold supported on a TiO2-impregnated SiO2 bimodal mesoporous support. The resulting material shows gold nanoparticles with a narrow size distribution around 3.0 nm, homogeneously dispersed over the TiO2/SiO2 material. Most interesti…