IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/nat/natcom/v8y2017i1d10.1038_ncomms15988.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Thermodynamic stability of ligand-protected metal nanoclusters

Author

Listed:
  • Michael G. Taylor

    (University of Pittsburgh)

  • Giannis Mpourmpakis

    (University of Pittsburgh)

Abstract

Despite the great advances in synthesis and structural determination of atomically precise, thiolate-protected metal nanoclusters, our understanding of the driving forces for their colloidal stabilization is very limited. Currently there is a lack of models able to describe the thermodynamic stability of these ‘magic-number’ colloidal nanoclusters as a function of their atomic-level structural characteristics. Herein, we introduce the thermodynamic stability theory, derived from first principles, which is able to address stability of thiolate-protected metal nanoclusters as a function of the number of metal core atoms and thiolates on the nanocluster shell. Surprisingly, we reveal a fine energy balance between the core cohesive energy and the shell-to-core binding energy that appears to drive nanocluster stabilization. Our theory applies to both charged and neutral systems and captures a large number of experimental observations. Importantly, it opens new avenues for accelerating the discovery of stable, atomically precise, colloidal metal nanoclusters.

Suggested Citation

  • Michael G. Taylor & Giannis Mpourmpakis, 2017. "Thermodynamic stability of ligand-protected metal nanoclusters," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 8(1), pages 1-8, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:nat:natcom:v:8:y:2017:i:1:d:10.1038_ncomms15988
    DOI: 10.1038/ncomms15988
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms15988
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1038/ncomms15988?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Ani Baghdasaryan & Feifei Wang & Fuqiang Ren & Zhuoran Ma & Jiachen Li & Xueting Zhou & Lilit Grigoryan & Chun Xu & Hongjie Dai, 2022. "Phosphorylcholine-conjugated gold-molecular clusters improve signal for Lymph Node NIR-II fluorescence imaging in preclinical cancer models," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 13(1), pages 1-11, December.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nat:natcom:v:8:y:2017:i:1:d:10.1038_ncomms15988. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.nature.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.