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Updated: May 8, 2026

Aqueous Synthesis of Plasmonic Gold-Tin Alloy Nanoparticles
Published on: March 15, 2024
A unique Au-Ag-Au triangular motif in a trimetallic halonium dication: silver incorporation in a gold(I) catalyst
Yuyang Zhu1, Cynthia S Day, Lin Zhang
1Chemistry Department, Wake Forest University, Salem Hall, Box 7486 (USA), Fax: (+1) 336-758-4656.
Abstract:
As a result of explorations into the solution chemistry of silver/gold mixtures, a unique diphosphine trimetallic chloronium dication was discovered that incorporates silver-arene chelation and a triangular mixed gold/silver core in the solid state. Notably, it was isolated from a Celite prefiltered solution initially thought to be silver-free. The crystal structure also incorporates the coordination to silver of one fluorine atom of one SbF6(-) counterion. The structure was compared to two new, but well-precedented, phosphine digold chloride cations. DFT calculations supported significant silver-halide and silver-arene interactions in the mixed gold/silver complex and metallophilic interactions in all three complexes. Comparison of computed data revealed that the ωB97X-D functional, which has a long-range corrected hybrid with atom-atom dispersion corrections, gave a better fit to the experimental data compared with the PBE0 functional, which has previously failed to capture aurophilic interactions. Preliminary studies support the presence of the mixed gold/silver structure in solution.
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