New Strategy for Preparing Thin Gold Films on Modified Glass Surfaces by Electroless Deposition

Abstract

This paper describes a new strategy for fabricating continuous gold films based on the self-assembly of the gold colloid monolayer on a poly(diallyldimethylammonium chloride)-modified glass slide, followed by electroless plating. Hydroxylamine-mediated reduction was proven as an excellent route to enlargement of immobilized nanoparticles on polymer-coated glass substrates in comparison to formaldehyde-mediated reduction. Au colloidal surface-catalyzed reduction of Au3+ by hydroxylamine exhibited very fast kinetics as monitored and confirmed by UV−vis spectroscopy in real time. The nanoscale morphology of the gold film was dependent on the initial coverage of gold nanoparticles and thermal annealing. Atomic force micrographs further revealed that enlarged particles were neither spherical nor cyclindrical, but highly complex in shape. The gold film thickness and its corresponding surface roughness could be easily controlled by setting the electroless deposition time. X-ray diffraction certified uniformity of deposits with the Au(111) crystallographic structure as the predominant one. No organic contamination during the course of electroless plating was observed as confirmed by both X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy and contact angle measurements. The stable and continuous gold films were used as electrodes for electrochemical experiments.

A Novel Silver Nanoparticles-based Sensing Probe for the Detection of Japanese Encephalitis Virus Antigen

“…Such change would lead to a corresponding increase in the absorbance intensity at 427 nm (Figure 8(a)) (Huy et al 2011). Similar optical absorption characteristics had been reported for the detection of fibrinogen using gold nanoparticles (Hrapovic et al 2003). ) and standard deviation (σ) were 0.9871 and 0.008045, respectively.…”

Solution chemistry approach to fabricate vertically aligned carbon nanotubes on gold wires: towards vertically integrated electronics

“…Instead small surface-absorbed gold particles from the plating solution were observed by AFM to grow in size, resulting in the eventual coverage of the entire silicon surface with a porous gold layer. Previously electroless deposition times of 5 min to 24 h [3,4,11,14] have been used. However, this was for a patterned surface of several micrometres in resolution.…”

“…It can be seen that electro-less deposition has resulted in the coalescence of gold nanoparticles into a complete layer. However, gold layers created by electroless deposition are typically porous [11,14,29], which is not entirely obvious in the images presented due to convolution of the AFM cantilever. In both cases a patterned region 160 nm in width was created and is a significant resolution improvement over previous work [4].…”

“…Evans et al [13] have reported a surface coverage as low as 13% for 20 nm colloidal gold particles, which demonstrates the dramatic effect particle size can have on surface coverage. Low nanoparticle surface coverage can be overcome using a plating technique known as electro-less deposition [4,11,13,14]. Electro-less deposition is an autocatalytic redox process, occurring only on catalytic surfaces [4], which is simple and inexpensive to perform using solution chemistry [11].…”

Electroactive properties of the multilayer films containing Prussian Blue nanoparticles

“…The versatility of multilayer formation process, with respect to variety of support materials and the possibility of incorporation of different functional species into multilayers results in extreme interest in such ultrathin objects [1-3, 7, 8]. Such nanometer thick polymer based materials with inhomogeneities embedded in the polymer matrix possess a number of specific properties, pertaining to their structure, thermodynamics and electronic, spectroscopic, optic, electromagnetic or chemical features [9][10][11] with potential application in chemistry, (bio)sensing and material science [12]. The properties of the obtained materials depend strongly on the inter particle distances in the matrix [13].…”