Facile, large-scale synthesis of dodecanethiol-stabilized Au38 clusters.

ABSTRACT: It has long been a major challenge to achieve synthetic control over size and monodispersity of gold thiolate nanoclusters. Among the reported Aun thiolate clusters, Au38 has been shown to be particularly stable but was only obtained as a minor product in previous syntheses. In this work, we report a bulk solution synthetic method that permits large-scale, facile synthesis of truly monodisperse Au38 nanoclusters. This new method explores a two-phase ligand exchange process utilizing glutathione-capped Aun clusters as the starting material. The ligand exchange process with neat dodecanethiols causes gold core etching and secondary growth of clusters, and eventually leads to monodisperse Au38 clusters in high purity, which eliminates nontrivial postsynthetic separation steps. This method can

SUBMITTER: Qian H 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC2682585 | biostudies-literature | 2009 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature