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Published on: December 11, 2013
Thiolated gold nanowires: metallic versus semiconducting
De-en Jiang1, Katsuyuki Nobusada, Weidong Luo
1Chemical Sciences Division, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, Tennessee 37831, USA. jiangd@ornl.gov
ACS Nano
|July 17, 2009
Summary
Researchers computationally designed thiolated gold nanowires, exploring vertex-sharing and face-sharing structures. The vertex-sharing nanowires exhibit tunable semiconducting or metallic properties, while face-sharing ones are always metallic.
Area of Science:
- Nanoscience and Materials Science
- Computational Chemistry
- Surface Science
Background:
- Extensive research exists on thiolated gold nanoparticles and self-assembled monolayers.
- Thiolated gold nanowires remain largely unexplored in scientific literature.
Purpose of the Study:
- To computationally design and investigate novel thiolated gold nanowires.
- To explore the electronic properties and structural variations of these one-dimensional nanosystems.
Main Methods:
- Computational design of linear chains of gold (Au) icosahedra.
- Modeling vertex-sharing and face-sharing fusion of icosahedra.
- Bridging icosahedra with thiolate (RS-) groups.
- Analysis of band structures and electron-count rules.
Main Results:
- Designed two distinct thiolated gold nanowire models: vertex-sharing and face-sharing.
- Demonstrated that vertex-sharing nanowires can be tuned to be semiconducting or metallic.
- Confirmed that face-sharing nanowires are inherently metallic.
- Explained the electronic property differences using band structure analysis.
Conclusions:
- Thiolated gold nanowires offer tunable electronic properties based on structural configuration.
- The findings provide insights into the behavior of gold nanowires and suggest experimental pathways.
- This work opens new avenues for the design and application of novel one-dimensional nanomaterials.
