Dumbbells, Trikes and Quads : Organic–Inorganic Hybrid Nanoarchitectures Based on “Clicked” Gold Nanoparticles

The controlled assembly of gold nanoparticles in terms of the spatial arrangement and number of particles is essential for many future applications like electronic devices, sensors and labeling. Here an approach is presented to build up oligomers of mono functionalized gold nanoparticles by the use of 1,3-bipolar azide alkyne cycloaddition click chemistry. The gold nanoparticles of 1.3 nm diameter are stabilized by one dendritic thioether ligand comprising an alkyne function. Together with di-, tri- and tetra-azide linker molecules the gold nanoparticle can be covalently coupled by a wet chemical protocol. The reaction is tracked with IR and UV–vis spectroscopy and the yielded organic-inorganic hybrid structures are analyzed by transmission electron microscopy. To evaluate the success of this click chemistry reaction statistical analysis of the formed oligomers is performed. The geometric and spatial arrangements of the found oligomers match perfectly the calculated values for the used linker molecules. Dimers, trimers and tetramers could be identified after the reaction with the corresponding linker molecule. The results of this model reaction suggest that the used click chemistry protocol is working well with mono functionalized gold nanoparticles.