Gold nanoparticles incorporated in hydrogels nucleation and growth studies
Nanostructured materials have drawn attention for their unknown properties. Aiming these new applications, some researchers carried out new approaches to the relationship between structure, morphology, and their physical-defined properties. Metallic nanoparticles, more specifically gold nanoparticles, can be used in a wide variety of advanced materials applications such as biomedical materials. The present study has the main goal to understand the role played by gold ion and gold nanocluster hydration in gold nanoparticle synthesis. The strategy was to investigate the synthesis of gold nanoparticles in H2O and D2O, using 0.45 mM HAuCl4 and HEPES (0.25 and 30 mM) as reducing agent, in phosphate buffer pH 10
The synthesis was carried out by chemical route, without the addition of polymeric surfactants and additives that interfere in the morphology of nanostructure morphology. The isotopic substitution of the solvent clearly affected the properties of AuNPs. The specific structural, morphological, and optical properties of AuNPs synthesized in H2O and D2O were characterized in situ by ultraviolet-visible spectroscopy (UV-vis) and small-angle X-ray scattering (SAXS) as a function of time and temperature. The UV-vis results reveal that the speed of formation of nanoparticles as well as the size distribution influences the amount of HEPES in the samples.