Noble metal nanoparticles and their application in electrochemical studies

Abstract

The “top–down” approach is becoming more and more challenging because of the decreasing size of the devices. As a result, scientists are searching for alternative ways to built smaller and faster devices. Therefore, the “bottom–up” method uses molecules to apply electronic functionalities. The fundamental research of the synthesis of noble metal nanoparticles of specific sizes is the driving force of this PhD–thesis. Thus, the design, synthesis and characterization of molecules for the stabilization of nanoparticles and the nanoparticles themselves are presented in this work. The aim of this thesis is to obtain deeper understanding of the correlation between the size of the noble metal nanoparticles and their electrochemical behavior. Gold nanoparticles with a single molecular monolayer are synthesized. And their electronic conductance and chargeability is investigated. Thus, studies are performed in close collaboration with the research group of Prof. Wandlowski from the University of Bern. Furthermore ether-containing oligomeric ligands of different sizes were synthesized. In the presence of these ligands nanoparticles of different metals were synthesized and the stability with unstabilized nanoparticles is compared.