Publication Date

Spring 2017

Document Type

Project Summary

Degree Name

Master of Science

Department

Analytical Chemistry

First Advisor

K. G. Sanjaya Ranmohotti, Ph.D.

Abstract

In recent years, galvanic replacement reactions have been successfully employed to produce bimetallic nanoparticles of a range of shapes, yet to date very few efforts have been devoted to develop methods for synthesizing smaller (<10nm) M/Ag; M=Au, Pt, Pd alloy particles using Ag hollow particles as sacrificial template. In this research work, we investigated new approach for the controllable synthesis of Au/Ag, Pd/Ag, and Pt/Ag alloy nanoparticles by applying galvanic replacement reaction on hollow Ag template in the presence of gold, palladium, and platinum salts. According to TEM analysis, the sizes of Au/Ag, Pd/Ag, and Pt/Ag alloy particle are 7.0±1.6 nm, 6.0±1.2 nm, and 3.0±0.8 nm, respectively. According to the study of optical property measurements on Ag hollow samples with increasing Au, Pt, and Pd content, it was observed that surface plasmon resonance peaks of the Au/Ag particles prepared with higher concentrated HAuCl4 solutions absorb at longer wavelengths and are red-shifted compared to the surface plasmon resonance of Ag hollow template. In the case of adding K2PdCl4 to Ag hollow sample resulted in blue shift of surface Plasmon resonance peaks for initial addition of palladium salt and further addition of K2PdCl4 caused the Plasmon peaks to diminish. Interestingly, our attempt to make Pt/Ag particle by reacting Ag hollow particles with various amounts of K2PtCl4 revealed that resulting alloy particles could still exhibit surface Plasmon resonance peaks for higher Pt content. Usually Pt and Pd nanoparticles do not exhibit surface plasmon resonance peaks in the visible spectrum. This work provides a model for a design of M/Ag; M=Au, Pt, Pd alloy particles, where combining Ag hollow samples with increasing amounts of Au, Pt, and Pd can provide successful execution of tenability of surface plasmon resonance.

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