Nucleation of gold nanoparticle superclusters from solution

Measurements of the solubility curve of a quasi-monodisperse gold nanoparticle solution are given. Temperature quenches from the one-phase to the two-phase regime yielded superclusters of the nanoparticle solid phase with sizes that depended on the quench depth. Classical nucleation theory was used to describe these sizes using a value of the surface tension for the nanoparticle solid phase of 0.042 erg/cm2. This value is consistent with molecule size scaling of the surface tension. In total these results show that suspensions of nanoparticles act like molecular solutions.