Quartz-crystal microbalance and spectrophotometric assessments of inter-core and inter-shell reactivities in nanoparticle thin film formation and growth

Spontaneous core-shell and shell-shell reactivities of thiolate-capped nano particles are exploited for assembling nanoparticle network thin films via an exchange-crosslinking-precipitation route. Gold nanoparticles of two dif ferent core sizes (2 and 5 nm) capped with decanethiolates and alkylthiols of two different functionalities, 1,9-nonanedithiol (NDT) and 11-mercaptoun decanoic acids (MUA), were studied as the assembly components. The film for mation and growth involve inter-core covalent Au-thiolate bonding at both e nds of NDT, or inter-shell non-covalent hydrogen-bonding at carboxylic acid terminals of MUA shells. The present work focuses on a kinetic assessment of the controlling factors based on UV-Visible spectrophotometric and quart z-crystal microbalance measurements. These measurements probe the evolution of the surface plasmon resonance band of nanoparticles and monitor the mas s loading of the assembled films, respectively. Both qualitative and quanti tative insights have been obtained for understanding the dependences of exc hange, nucleation and crystallization processes on core size and shell stru cture. The implication of the results for designing nanostructured assembli es using core-shell nanoparticles as building blocks is discussed in terms of binding site, core size and shell structure.