Abstract
In recent years, plasma-induced non-equilibrium electrochemistry (PiNE) has been increasingly used for the synthesis of nanomaterials. In this study, we investigated the effect of solution pH on the formation of AuNP/MWCNT nanocomposites synthesized by PiNE. It is found that resulting nanocomposite morphology can be manipulated by the solution pH with pH 2 giving the most uniformly distributed AuNP along the MWCNT surface during the nanocomposite formation. The detailed mechanisms of AuNP/MWCNT nanocomposites formation under different pH have been discussed. For selected AuNP/MWCNT, we further evaluated the photothermal conversion performance under a blue laser (wavelength 445 nm) and the material biocompatibility using HeLa cells. The promising photothermal capability and biocompatibility of the composite sample point to their potential future applications such as solar thermal conversion and healthcare technology.
Highlights
In recent years, there has been an increasing volume of research in deploying atmospheric pressure plasma for a wide range of applications ranging from healthcare to environmental remediation and material science [1,2,3]
We investigated the effect of solution pH on the formation of AuNP/multiwall carbon nanotube (MWCNT) nanocomposites synthesized by plasma-induced non-equilibrium electrochemistry (PiNE)
We further investigated the effect of different solution pH on the resulting structures of the AuNP/carbon nanotube (CNT) nanocomposites synthesized by PiNE and the formation mechanisms under different pH conditions have been discussed
Summary
There has been an increasing volume of research in deploying atmospheric pressure plasma for a wide range of applications ranging from healthcare to environmental remediation and material science [1,2,3]. In the field of material synthesis, atmospheric pressure microplasma (APM)–liquid interaction and PiNE has been successfully deployed for applications such as surface functionalization of nanostructures (e.g. carbon nanomaterials [4] and Si nanocrystals [5]), synthesis of metal nanoparticles (NPs) (e.g. AuNPs [6] and AgNPs [7]) and metal oxides such as Fe3O4 [8], CuO [9], and Co3O4 [10]. Out of these studies, AuNPs synthesized by APM is of particular interest, due to the unique physical and chemical properties of the nanoparticles [11,12,13]. The photothermal conversion of the AuNP/CNT under a blue laser irradiation (445 nm) has been demonstrated and the cytotoxicity of the composite was evaluated
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