NANOCIENCE

NAME: Christian Castro

DATE: 03/12/2015

CHARACTERIZATION OF GOLD AND SILVER NANOPARTICLES USING

UV-VIS SPECTROMETRY

There are mainly two ways to obtain nanoparticles: bottom to top and top to bottom. In
the first case there are three major stages: reduction, nucleation and stabilization. This
process is applicable for preparing both gold and silver nanoparticles.
Before of the synthesis of nanoparticles its necessary to obtain metal ions, in the case
of silver this can be done by placing it in the presence of hydrogen, producing +1
charged ions, and in the case of gold ions generated, will have a +3 charge. Once these
ions generated, the charge should be reduced to 0, to achieve this, we can use reducing
agents from diverse sources, for instance synthetic compounds or flavonoids from plant
extracts, which provide the necessary electrons to reduce the metals. This reduction
doesnt show a significant change in the ions size, for instance silver size is 0.26 nm
when it has +1 charge and this size remains wen it has 0 charge.
The next step in the process is nucleation, in which ions without charges are gathering
gradually with the time, increasing the size of the nanoparticle that has a direct
influence on some of its properties, including opticals like the surface plasmon
resonance, which indicates that the change in color of the nanoparticles is proportional
to the solvent cooncentration, the nanoparticles form or dimensions. For instance at a
macro level silver has a characteristic white color, while their nanoparticles depending
on their size vary in color from yellows to browns, this variation is due to its lambda
max can be found between 380-480 nm. On the other hand the gold at the macro level
has a characteristic yellow color, but as nanoparticles their colors can range from purple
to blue, or in terms of lambda max from 520-540 nm.
Due to the surface plasmon resonance explained above, it is possible to estimate the size
of the nanoparticles using UV-Vis spectroscopy, obtaining an Abs vs. Wavelength graph,
which will show a single peak between 380-480 nm if we are in the presence of silver
nanoparticles and between 520-540 if the nanoparticles are gold. Furthermor this
analysis can serve to predict the shape of the nanoparticles, for instance if the
nanoparticles are sphericals the graph only show a single peak due to the unic surface
present in a sphere, while if the form is cubic the graph show three peaks, each

corresponding to the particle orientation that this may have at the time of light
incidence.