Ashok Mohanty

A Universal Approach to the Synthesis of Noble Metal Nanodendrites and Their Catalytic Properties

A universal approach is presented for high-yield synthesis of Au, Pt, and Pd nanoflowers using the surfactant sodium N-(4-n-dodecyloxybenzoyl)-L-isoleucinate (SDBIL). The pH-dependent self-assembly using SDBIL is critical for nanoflower growth. The Pt and Pd nanoflowers show superior catalytic activity for Suzuki–Miyaura and Heck coupling reactions over spherical counterparts.

The Role of bromide ions in seeding growth of Au nanorods

We report our findings on the important role of bromide ions in the seeding growth process of Au nanorods. The seed-mediated process constitutes a well-developed method for synthesizing gold nanorods in high yield, which is facilitated by a micelle-forming surfactant, cetyltrimethylammonium bromide (CTA-Br). Despite the tremendous work in recent years, the growth mechanism of Au nanorods has not been fully understood. Contrary to the widely accepted mechanism of CTA(+) micelle-templated growth of Au nanorods, we have identified the critical role of bromide ions in the seeding growth of Au nanorods. We found that even when the micelle-forming agent (CTA(+)) concentration is below its critical micelle concentration (cmc), bromide ions added in the form of NaBr can successfully effect the growth of Au nanorods in good yield. By controlling the concentration of externally added bromide ions, the rod shape and dimensions of the resulting Au nanoparticles can be readily controlled in the presence of only a minimum amount of CTABr (as a steric stabilizer for nanorods). High-resolution TEM studies show that the as-formed nanorods are perfectly single crystalline, instead of penta-twinned ones, and are bound by {111} and {100} facets with a [110] direction as the elongation direction. A mechanism is proposed to account for the seeding growth of single crystalline Au nanorods. Overall, this work explicitly demonstrates that Br(-) indeed serves as an important shape-directing agent for gold nanorod formation in the seed-mediated process.

Robust gold nanoparticles stabilized by trithiol for application in chemiresistive sensors

The use of gold nanoparticles coated with an organic monolayer of thiol for application in chemiresistive sensors was initiated in the late 1990s; since then, such types of sensors have been widely pursued due to their high sensitivities and reversible responses to volatile organic compounds (VOCs). However, a major issue for chemical sensors based on thiol-capped gold nanoparticles is their poor long-term stability as a result of slow degradation of the monothiol-to-gold bonds. We have devised a strategy to overcome this limitation by synthesizing a more robust system using Au nanoparticles capped by trithiol ligands. Compared to its monothiol counterpart, the new system is significantly more stable and also shows improved sensitivity towards different types of polar or non-polar VOCs. Thus, the trithiol-Au nanosensor shows great promise for use in real world applications.