The Study of the Dispersity of Gold Aerosols with the Use of Au–AOT Composite Films

Abstract

Approaches have been proposed for determining the dispersity of a gold organosol with an AOT concentration of 0.25 M by examining the surface of an Au–AOT composite film by scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and atomic force microscopy (AFM) methods. The film has been obtained from a concentrated sol by the Doctor Blade method and subjected to thermolysis at 523 K for 2 h. The composite consists of individual Au nanoparticles coated with a surfactant adsorption layer. The average sizes of the particles are 11 ± 2 and 12 ± 3 nm, as determined by SEM and AFM, respectivelt, and correlate with the data of classical methods used for determining dispersity of sols, namely, photon-correlation spectrometry (13 ± 1 nm), transmission electron microscopy (7 ± 2 nm), and plasmon resonance spectrophotometry (15 nm).