Thiol-functionalized gold nanopartides

Foos, E.E., Snow, A.W., Twigg, M.E. and Ancona, M.G. (2002) Thiol-terminated di-, tri-, and tetraethylene oxide functionalized gold nanopartides a water-soluble, charge-neutral duster. Chemistry of Materials, 14, 2401-8. 

Yee, C.Y., Jordan, R., Ulman, A., White, H., King, A., Rafailovich, M. and Sokolov, J. (1999) Novel one-phase synthesis of thiol-functionalized gold, palladium, and iridium nanopartides using superhydride. Langmuir, 15, 3486. 

The nematic nanoparticies have been prepared by a two step synthetic process. First, gold nanopartides are covered with an alkylthiol monolayer (hexyl- and dodecylthiol) in a second step, the alkylthiol-nanoparticles are reacted with the functionalized thiol mesogen in dichloromethane at room temperature to obtain the monolayer-protected liquid crystal gold nanopartides. These materials are chemically stable and display a nematic mesophase at room temperature [67, 68]. Other examples include liquid crystal gold nanopartides functionalized by hexaalkoxy-substituted triphenylene [69]. 

High degree of control may be exerdsed over the gold nanoparticle size, monodispersity [34] and chemical nature of the nanopartide surface (via capping with terminally functionalized thiols, amines, amino adds etc.) [39, 41-57]. 

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