Publication Date

8-2014

Advisor(s) - Committee Chair

Rajalingam Dakshinamurthy (Director), Kevin Williams, Bangbo Yan

Degree Program

Department of Chemistry

Degree Type

Master of Science

Abstract

Owing to the importance of gold nanoparticles in catalysis, designing of them has become a major focus of the researchers. Most of the current methods available for the synthesis of gold nanoaprticles (GNPs) suffer from the challenges of polydispersity, stability and use of toxic and harmful chemicals. To overcome these limitations of conventional methods, in our present study, we made an attempt to design a method for the green synthesis of monodispersed and stable gold nanoparticles by sugars which act as reducing and stabilizing agent. Characterization of synthesized nanoparticles was done by using various analytical techniques such as transmission electron microscope (TEM), dynamic light scattering spectroscopy (DLS), UV-Vis spectroscopy, scanning electron microscopy and electron dispersion spectroscopy. The synthesized sugar GNPs (S-GNPs) were spherical in shape and in the size range of 10 ± 5 nm. p-Nitrophenol reduction assay was used as a model system to determine the catalytic reduction activity of various sugar capped GNPs, monosaccharides (fructose), disaccharide (sucrose) and trisaccharide (raffinose) GNPs. The effect of temperature and the size of ligand on catalytic activity was also evaluated at different temperature using UV-Vis spectrometer. Using the spectroscopic data, rate constant (k) for three sugar capped GNPs was determined followed by its activation energy (Ea) and exponential (A) factor.

Disciplines

Analytical Chemistry | Chemistry | Medicinal-Pharmaceutical Chemistry | Organic Chemistry

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