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Updated: Aug 6, 2025

In Situ Synthesis of Gold Nanoparticles without Aggregation in the Interlayer Space of Layered Titanate Transparent Films
Published on: January 17, 2017
Photo- and Temperature-Induced Reversible Structural Transformation between Dodecanuclear and Pentadecanuclear
Liang-Liang Yan1, Vivian Wing-Wah Yam1
1Institute of Molecular Functional Materials, State Key Laboratory of Synthetic Chemistry, and Department of Chemistry, The University of Hong Kong, Pokfulam Road, Hong Kong 999077, P. R. China.
Abstract:
Stimuli-responsive structural transformation has attracted much attention for its potential to mimic the behavior of biological transformations and functions. Here, two unprecedented dodecanuclear and pentadecanuclear gold(I) sulfido clusters (denoted and , respectively) with impressive stimuli-responsive interconversion have been obtained by taking advantage of the judiciously designed tridentate phosphine ligand L as the building block. Both UV light and temperature can be applied to trigger the structural conversions between and . In addition, NMR, high-resolution electrospray ionization mass spectrometry, and UV-vis absorption spectroscopy have been employed to monitor the transformation process and decipher the mechanism of structural conversion. This work not only provides a paradigm to investigate photo-induced cluster-to-cluster transformation based on polydentate phosphine ligands but also offers a new direction for the construction of the stimuli-responsive materials.
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