Low-Temperature Sintering of Colloidal Gold Nanoparticles by Salt Addition

Abstract

Gold nanoparticles synthetized by pulsed laser ablation in liquid with a mean diameter of 4 nm were joined together by adding potassium bromide solution at various concentrations. By increasing the salt concentration, there is a significant increase of the particle size up to a mean diameter of 18 nm. We have studied the nanoparticle merging by using atomic force and electron microscopy characterizations, also demonstrating that it is possible to deposit sintered nanoparticles on silanized substrates in a fast, simple, cost-effective, energy-saving method with relevance in industrial manufacturing.