Branched Gold Nanostructures Through a Facile Fructose Mediated Microwave Route

Abstract

This work reports on the synthesis of different morphologies of gold nanoparticles using a microwave assisted route that is rapid, in situ and seedless. Unlike many currently employed fabricating methods, this method takes place in a single step in microwave. Gold nanospheres with an average particle size of 26 nm were synthesized with only using fructose as a novel reducing agent without any other addition of stabilizers. Branched Gold nanostars were fabricated using fructose, trisodium citrate and NaOH. Varying the concentrations of the Au and NaOH also resulted in the formation of stable gold nanospheres with particle sizes of 4.8 nm and 13 nm respectively. Using fructose along with triethanol amine led to the formation of homogeneously distributed gold nanoflowers. The mechanism for the formation of various morphologies is also presented. Such morphologies are of potential interest in applications such as sensing and catalysis due to the well understood size dependent behaviour of Gold.