Determining the Structure of Silver-Coated Gold Nanoparticles Using Anomalous Small Angle X-ray Scattering (ASAXS)
Authors:
- Students:
- Julia Chom
- Vanessa Huerta
- Isha Shah
- Teachers:
- Wayne Oras
- Mentors:
- Mrinal Bera (University of Chicago, ChemMatCARS)
Advanced Photon Source Sector 15: ChemMatCARS
An important objective within the field of nanotechnology is to understand how the dispersion of elements within the bimetallic nanoparticles (BNP’s) affects the resulting properties. Emerging properties from BNPs represent a field of biomedical and chemical engineering with revolutionary nanobiological solutions. BNPs have been prepared and utilized as antimicrobial agents in wastewater treatment, medical devices, medicinal tolerance solutions, and catalysis. The properties and efficiency of these nanoparticles for various applications depend upon how the two metals are distributed within the nanoparticles. In order to understand the structure-property relationship of these bimetallic nanoparticles, it is important to characterize the distribution of the metals within the core-shell structure. TEM is a common method used to determine information from nanoparticles yet there are issues with this process of collecting data. The most significant issue that arises is that core-shell information is difficult to process since the data is not statistically significant as TEM focuses on information solely from select particles. Techniques like TEM, SEM, and AFM are generally used for characterizing nanomaterials, but they don’t provide statistical information about the core shell structure. ASAXS is element-sensitive while also having the ability to produce structural information.