Gold (Au) and silver (Ag) nanostructures have widespread utilization from biomedicine to materials science. Therefore, their synthesis with control of their morphology and surface chemistry have been among the hot topics over the last decades. Here, we introduce a new approach relying on sugar derivatives that work as reducing, stabilizing, and capping agents in the synthesis of Au and Ag nanostructures. These sugar derivatives are utilized alone and as mixture, resulting in spherical, spheroid, trigonal, polygonic, and star-like morphologies. The synthesis approach was further tested in the presence of acetate and dimethylamine as size- and shape-directing agents. With the use of transmission electron microscopy (TEM), selected area electron diffraction (SAED), x-ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), and ultraviolet-visible (UV-vis) absorption spectroscopy techniques, the particle size, shape, assembly, aggregation, and film formation characteristics were evaluated. NPs’ attributes were shown to be tunable by manipulating the sugar ligand selection and sugar ligand/metal-ion ratio. For instance, with an imine side group and changing the sugar moiety from cellobiose to lactose, the morphology of the Ag nanoparticles (NPs) transformed from well dispersed cubic to rough and aggregated. The introduction of acetate and dimethylamine further extended the growth pattern and morphological properties of these NPs. As examples, L5 AS, G5AS, and S5AS ligands formed spherical or sheet-like structures when used alone, which upon the use of these additives transformed into larger multicore and rough NPs, revealing their significant effect on the NP morphology. Selected samples were tested for their stability against protein corona formation and ionic strength, where a high chemical stability and resistance to protein coating were observed. The findings show a promising, benign approach for the synthesis of shape- and size-directed Au and Ag nanostructures, along with a selection of the chemistry of carbohydrate-derivatives that can open new windows for their applications.

In this study, the structural characteristics and thermal degradation behaviour of barium, calcium and zinc soaps of hemp seed oil prepared using the metathesis method are reported. Scanning electron micrographs of the metal soaps showed similar plate-like microstructures and are indicative of an orderly packed particulate structure. The thermal decomposition consisted of one single step on the weight loss – temperature curves located around 250 – 450 oC for all the divalent metal soaps at the various heating rates and the weight loss occurring at temperatures up to 200 oC was less than 10%. The average values of the apparent activation energy obtained for the thermal decomposition of metal soaps of HSO were 18.73 kJ/mol for Zn-HSO, 13.77 kJ/mol for Ca-HSO and 8.48 kJ/mol for Ba-HSO.