"Precipitation on Nanoparticles": Attractive Intermolecular Interactions Stabilize Specific Ligand Ratios on the Surfaces of Nanoparticles.

"Precipitation on Nanoparticles": Attractive Intermolecular Interactions Stabilize Specific Ligand Ratios on the Surfaces of Nanoparticles. Angew Chem Int Ed Engl. 2018 Apr 19;: Authors: Chu Z, Han Y, Kral P, Klajn R Abstract Confining organic molecules to the surfaces of inorganic nanoparticles can induce intermolecular interactions between them, which can affect the composition of the mixed self-assembled monolayers obtained by co-adsorption from solution of two different molecules. Here, we study co-adsorption of two thiolated ligands-a dialkylviologen and a zwitterionic sulfobetaine-that can interact with each other electrostatically, onto gold nanoparticles. Consequently, the nanoparticles favor a narrow range of ratios of these two molecules that is largely independent of the molar ratio in solution. We show that changing the solution molar ratio of two ligands by a factor of ~5,000 affects the on-nanoparticle ratio of these ligands by only 3 times. This behavior is reminiscent of the formation of insoluble inorganic salts (e.g., AgCl), which similarly compensate positive and negative charges upon crystallizing. Our results pave the way towards developing well-defined hybrid organic-inorganic nanostructures. PMID: 29673022 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher]
Source: Angewandte Chemie - Category: Chemistry Authors: Tags: Angew Chem Int Ed Engl Source Type: research