pH-Induced Surface Modification of Atomically Precise Silver Nanoclusters: An Approach for Tunable Optical and Electronic Properties

Noble metal nanoclusters (NCs) play a pivotal role in bridging the gap between molecules and quantum dots. Fundamental understanding of the evolution of the structural, optical, and electronic properties of these materials in various environments is of paramount importance for many applications. Using state-of-the-art spectroscopy, we provide the first decisive experimental evidence that the structural, electronic, and optical properties of Ag-44(MNBA)(30) NCs can now be tailored by controlling the chemical environment. Infrared and photoelectron spectroscopies clearly indicate that there is a dimerization between two adjacent ligands capping the NCs that takes place upon lowering the pH from 13 to 7.

Citation

AbdulHalim LG, Hooshmand Z, Parida MR, Aly SM, Le D, et al. (2016) pH-Induced Surface Modification of Atomically Precise Silver Nanoclusters: An Approach for Tunable Optical and Electronic Properties. Inorganic Chemistry 55: 11522–11528. Available: http://dx.doi.org/10.1021/acs.inorgchem.6b02067.

Sponsors

This work was supported by King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), and part of this work was supported by Saudi Arabia Basic Industries Corporation (SABIC) grant RGC/3/2470-01. The work at U Nebraska was partly supported by the U. S. Department of Energy through grant #DE-FG02-07ER15842. This work was performed, in part, at the Center for Nanoscale Materials, a U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science User Facility under Contract No. DE-AC02-06CH11357. DFT calculations (ZH, DL, and TSR) were performed at the UCF Advanced Research Computing Center and partially supported by NSF grant CHE-1310327. We thank Sampyo Hong for fruitful discussions.