Useful multivariate kinetic analysis: Size determination based on cystein-induced aggregation of gold nanoparticles

This study describes spectrometric monitored kinetic processes to determine the size of citrate-capped Au nanoparticles (Au NPs) based on aggregation induced by l-cysteine (l-Cys) as a molecular linker. The Au NPs association process is thoroughly dependent on pH, concentration and size of nanoparticles. Size dependency of aggregation inspirits to determine the average diameters of Au NPs. For this aim the procedure is achieved in aqueous medium at pH 7 (phosphate buffer), and multivariate data including kinetic spectra of Au NPs are collected during aggregation process. Subsequently partial least squares (PLS) modeling is carried out analyzing the obtained data. The model is built on the basis of relation between the kinetics behavior of aggregation and different Au NPs sizes. Training the model was performed using latent variables (LVs) of the original data. The analytical performance of the model was characterized by relative standard error. The proposed method was applied to determination of size in unknown samples. The predicted sizes of unknown samples that obtained by the introduced method are interestingly in agreement with the sizes measured by Transmission Electron Microscopy (TEM) images and Dynamic Light Scattering (DLS) measurement.