Size controlled synthesis of gold nanoparticles and sensor design.

• Main Author: Sim, Adeline Ching Ee.
• Other Authors: School of Chemical and Biomedical Engineering
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: 2013
• Subjects: DRNTU::Engineering::Bioengineering; DRNTU::Engineering::Nanotechnology
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/52847
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

Noble metal nanoparticles, such as AuNPs, have attracted tremendous interest due to their optical properties. Size and shape controlled synthesis of AuNPs act as a technological scaffold for practical studies, as properties of nanoparticles are prominently size and shape dependent. This has resulted in its widespread usage in a variety of applications, including cancer therapy, drug delivery or biosensors, which further raise the demands and needs on numerous shapes and size of AuNPs. Important progress has been made over the centuries on the synthesis and its sensitivity of nanoparticles. This report comprises of the study of size and shaped controlled synthesis of AuNPs synthesized predominantly via citrate reduction and seed growth assisted mechanism. The control of the surface plasmon resonance absorption has a paramount importance for biomedical applications and the selection of anisotropic size morphology can also enhance their sensing capabilities. In this study, we have studied the behavior and the synthesis of gold nanostructures mainly with spherical and star morphology and their subsequent evolution to gold nanostructures. The nanoparticles have been mainly characterized by UV-Vis, Raman spectroscopy, TEM and SEM in order to check the plasmonic maximum absorption and its relationship with the different size and shape morphologies obtained as well as its sensitivity with regards to AuNPs.