Synthesis of gold nanoparticles with different atomistic structural characteristics

A chemical reduction method was used to produce nanometric gold particles. Depending on the concentration of the main reactant compound different nanometric sizes and consequently different atomic structural configurations of the particles are obtained. Insights on the structural nature of the gold nanoparticles are obtained through a comparison between digitally-processed experimental high-resolution electron microscopy images and theoretically-simulated images obtained with a multislice approach of the dynamical theory of electron diffraction. Quantum molecular mechanical calculations, based on density functional theory, are carried out to explain the relationships between the stability of the gold nanoparticles, the atomic structural configurations and the size of nanoparticles.