Continuous flow synthesis of citrate capped gold nanoparticles using UV induced nucleation
File(s)
Published version
Author(s)
du Toit, H
Macdonald, TJ
Huang, H
Parkin, IP
Gavriilidis, A
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
A new approach for synthesising gold nanoparticles of controlled size in the presence of trisodium citrate is presented. UV light is employed as a photoinitiator for the reduction of Au(III) by citrate. The UV induced nucleation takes place in a glass capillary tube (0.8 mm internal diameter) illuminated by a series of germicidal UVC lamps. This has been coupled sequentially with a heated coil to accelerate growth. In this way the processes of nucleation and growth are effectively separated. Slug flow is utilised in order to avoid tube fouling using heptane as segmenting fluid. Increasing UV intensity and temperature of the growth section lead to decrease of nanoparticle size, whilst varying UV exposure time results in a nonmonotonic effect on particle size. By varying UV intensity from 0 to 1461 mW cm−2 at a contant exposure time of 10 s, and a constant growth time of 20 min, the nanoparticles obtained range in size from 9.5 ± 1.3 nm to 36.1 ± 6.9 nm at a low growth temperature of 60 °C, and 6.6 ± 0.8 nm to 14.2 ± 6.4 nm at a high growth temperature of 100 °C.
Date Issued
2017-02-01
Date Acceptance
2017-01-20
Citation
RSC Advances: an international journal to further the chemical sciences, 2017, 7 (16), pp.9632-9638
ISSN
2046-2069
Publisher
Royal Society of Chemistry
Start Page
9632
End Page
9638
Journal / Book Title
RSC Advances: an international journal to further the chemical sciences
Volume
7
Issue
16
Copyright Statement
© The Royal Society of Chemistry 2017. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported Licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/).
Identifier
https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/2017/RA/C6RA27173A#!divAbstract
Subjects
03 Chemical Sciences
Publication Status
Published
Date Publish Online
2017-02-01