Issue 6, 2019

Direct SERS tracking of a chemical reaction at a single 13 nm gold nanoparticle

Abstract

Metal nanoparticles (NPs) with decreased sizes are promising catalysts in energy and medicine. Measuring the local reactions and simultaneously acquiring molecular insights at single small NPs, however, remain an experimental challenge. Here we report on surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopic (SERS) tracking of catalytic reactions of single 13 nm gold NPs (GNPs) in situ. We designed spatially isolated (>1.5 μm of inter-dimer space) GNP dimers, each of which consisted of two GNPs with sizes of ∼200 and ∼13 nm, respectively. This design integrates the SERS and catalytic activities into a single entity, while eliminating the crosstalk between adjacent particles, which allows us to trace the redox-derived spectral evolution at single 13 nm GNPs for the first time. We also quantified the reaction kinetics of each individual GNP and analyzed the average behavior of multiple GNPs. There is a large variability among different particles, which underscores the significance of single particle analysis.

Graphical abstract: Direct SERS tracking of a chemical reaction at a single 13 nm gold nanoparticle

Supplementary files

Article information

Article type
Edge Article
Submitted
09 Oct 2018
Accepted
02 Dec 2018
First published
04 Dec 2018
This article is Open Access

All publication charges for this article have been paid for by the Royal Society of Chemistry
Creative Commons BY license

Chem. Sci., 2019,10, 1741-1745

Direct SERS tracking of a chemical reaction at a single 13 nm gold nanoparticle

K. Zhang, Y. Liu, Y. Wang, J. Zhao and B. Liu, Chem. Sci., 2019, 10, 1741 DOI: 10.1039/C8SC04496A

This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported Licence. You can use material from this article in other publications without requesting further permissions from the RSC, provided that the correct acknowledgement is given.

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