Dodecanethiol-capped gold (Au) nanocrystal superlattices can undergo a surprisingly diverse series of ordered structure transitions when heated (Goodfellow, B. W.; Rasch, M. R.; Hessel, C. M.; Patel, R. N.; Smilgies, D.-M.; Korgel, B. A. Nano Lett. 2013, 13, 5710-5714). These are the result of highly uniform changes in nanocrystal size, which subsequently force a spontaneous rearrangement of su...

Organo-soluble photoresponsive azo thiol monolayer-protected gold nanorods were synthesized; the resulting gold nanorods encapsulated by thiols on their entire surface with strong covalent Au-S linkages were very stable in both organic solvents and in the solid state without aggregation or decomposition.

A facile and efficient synthetic route leading to catalytically relevant N-heterocyclic carbene (NHC) gold complexes is described. The method consists of one pot synthesis starting from readily available imidazolium salts and [AuCl(tht)], in the presence of K2CO3. Using the same protocol NHC silver complexes have been synthesised starting from AgNO3.

Large water-soluble gold clusters are used for the labelling of biological material to visualize the posi­ tion of reactive sites by electron microscopy [1]. In most investigations of this type a commercial prod­ uct was used, for which little chemical information has been published (for review see [9]). Large gold clusters can be prepared using phosphines as lig­ ands [2, 3] or more easily wit...

The transition voltage of vacuum-spaced and molecular junctions constructed with Ag and Pt electrodes is investigated by non-equilibrium Green's function formalism combined with density functional theory. Our calculations show that, similarly to the case of Au-vacuum-Au previously studied, the transition voltages of Ag and Pt metal-vacuum-metal junctions with atomic protrusions on the electrode...

Current-voltage measurements of metal-molecule-metal junctions formed from pi-conjugated thiols exhibit an inflection point on a plot of ln(I/V(2)) vs 1/V, consistent with a change in transport mechanism from direct tunneling to field emission. The transition voltage was found to scale linearly with the offset in energy between the Au Fermi level and the highest occupied molecular orbital as de...

When Au is subdivided to the nanoscale its reactivity changes from an inert nature to one of incredible reactivity which is not replicated by other catalysts. When dispersed onto metal oxides such as TiO2, nano-Au has shown high reactivities for a multitude of reduction and oxidation reactions of industrial importance with potential and current uses such as, CO oxidation, NO x reduction, purifi...

We have studied the stability of thiolated Au38 nanoparticles (NPs) via density functional theory based calculations varying the coverage from 0 up to 32 molecules. Three different initial core arrangements were considered for the cluster, spherical, tubular, and bi-icosahedral, while thiol groups were attached to the cluster via the sulfur atom either as single molecules or forming more comple...

Using time-perturbed density functional theory the optical activity of metal-thiolate compounds formed by highly symmetric Ag and Au nanoparticles (NPs) and a methyl-thiol molecule is studied after performing atomic optimizations and electronic calculations upon adsorption. Many different sites and orientations of the adsorbed molecule on icosahedral Ag and Au NPs of 55 atoms are considered. Up...