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Published on: February 20, 2016
3D halos assembled from Fe3O4/Au NPs with enhanced catalytic and optical properties
Ren Cai1, Dan Yang2, Keng-Te Lin2
1Molecular Sciences and Biomedicine Laboratory (MBL), State Key Laboratory for Chemo/Biosensing and Chemometrics, College of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering and College of Biology, Aptamer Engineering Center of Hunan Province, Hunan University, Changsha 410082, China. tan@chem.ufl.edu and Department of Chemistry and Department of Physiology and Functional Genomics, Center for Research at the Bio/Nano Interface, Shands Cancer Center, UF Genetics Institute, McKnight Brain Institute, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL 32611-7200, USA.
Abstract:
3D structures assembled from multiple components have attracted increasing research interest based on their enriched functionalities and broadened applications. Here, we report a bottom-up strategy to fabricate 3D halos through the co-assembly of Fe3O4 and Au nanoparticles (NPs). Typically, Fe3O4 NPs assemble into a 3D core (size around 500 nm) with simultaneous growth of Au NPs on the 3D surface during the assembly process. As a general approach, a variety of 3D halos were fabricated from the co-assembly of Fe3O4 and Au NPs of different sizes and shapes. To demonstrate the advantages of these 3D halo structures, their catalytic activity to mimic natural enzymes was investigated. Compared with Fe3O4 NP building blocks, enhanced catalytic efficiency was achieved by the 3D halos. In addition, the optical behavior of the 3D halos was simulated using a three-dimensional finite-difference time-domain (3D-FDTD) method. As shown in the results, the 3D halos attached to 90 nm Au NPs could absorb more incident light owing to high electric field intensities, making these structures promising for applications in energy harvesting and detection-related fields.
