Western Kentucky University
Green Synthesis, Characterization of Sugar Coated Gold Nanoparticles for Catalytic Applications
Institution
Western Kentucky University
Faculty Advisor/ Mentor
Rajalingam Dakshinamurthy
Abstract
Gold nanoparticles (GNPs) are of interest because of their wide applications in the biomedical and pharmaceutical fields, which is due to their unique physico-chemical properties when they are reduced to their nanoscale size range. We developed a novel single step biofriendly process for synthesis of fructose (monosaccharide), sucrose (disaccharide) and raffinose (trisaccharide) capped GNPs, wherein sugar was directly capped onto gold without the use of any secondary capping/stabilizing agent. Our study was mainly focused on the effect of various lengths of sugars in formation and catalytic reduction activity of sugar capped GNPs. Characterization of synthesized GNPs was done using various analytical techniques like transmission electron microscopy (TEM), SEM-EDS, FTIR, UV-Vis spectroscopy. P-nitrophenol assay was used to evaluate the catalytic reduction activity of various sugar capped GNPs at different temperatures using UV-Vis spectrometer. Using the spectroscopic data, the rate constant for three sugar capped GNPs was determined followed by its activation energy using different equations. From the kinetic data, the catalytic reduction activity for three sugars was in the descending order of fructose, sucrose and raffinose GNPs respectively. This difference in the catalytic activity is believed to be due to the size of ligand on gold surface that greatly influences the surface/volume ratio.
Green Synthesis, Characterization of Sugar Coated Gold Nanoparticles for Catalytic Applications
Gold nanoparticles (GNPs) are of interest because of their wide applications in the biomedical and pharmaceutical fields, which is due to their unique physico-chemical properties when they are reduced to their nanoscale size range. We developed a novel single step biofriendly process for synthesis of fructose (monosaccharide), sucrose (disaccharide) and raffinose (trisaccharide) capped GNPs, wherein sugar was directly capped onto gold without the use of any secondary capping/stabilizing agent. Our study was mainly focused on the effect of various lengths of sugars in formation and catalytic reduction activity of sugar capped GNPs. Characterization of synthesized GNPs was done using various analytical techniques like transmission electron microscopy (TEM), SEM-EDS, FTIR, UV-Vis spectroscopy. P-nitrophenol assay was used to evaluate the catalytic reduction activity of various sugar capped GNPs at different temperatures using UV-Vis spectrometer. Using the spectroscopic data, the rate constant for three sugar capped GNPs was determined followed by its activation energy using different equations. From the kinetic data, the catalytic reduction activity for three sugars was in the descending order of fructose, sucrose and raffinose GNPs respectively. This difference in the catalytic activity is believed to be due to the size of ligand on gold surface that greatly influences the surface/volume ratio.