Minelli, C; Shard, A G (2016) Chemical measurements of polyethylene glycol shells on gold nanoparticles in the presence of aggregation. Biointerphases, 11 (4). 04B306

Full text not available from this repository.

Abstract

Understanding and controlling the performance of engineered nanoparticle (NP) systems requires quantitative characterisation of their coatings. Useful measurements methods have been described for NPs in liquid environment, but NP aggregation often represents a limiting factor which impairs the accuracy of techniques such as dynamic light scattering for quantification purposes. Here, we show how differential centrifugal sedimentation (DCS) and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) can provide quantitative information on the NP coating thickness, molecular conformation and grafting density of aggregated NP samples. We find that thiol-terminated methoxy polyethylene glycol (mPEG) coating thickness on gold NPs increases with increasing particle size and mPEG molecular weight. The hydration of the mPEG shell was estimated by comparing the shell thickness measured in liquid by DCS and vacuum by XPS and was found to increase with the mPEG molecular weight. Finally, we used XPS to measure the grafting density of the mPEG molecules. This was found to depend on the mPEG molecular volume and decreased for larger mPEG molecules, suggesting that the grafting density is determined by the conformation of the mPEG molecules in liquid. This analysis provides practical measurement methods for optimising the design of engineered NP systems and ultimately enhance and control their performance

Item Type:	Article
Keywords:	nanoparticle, coating, PEG, XPS, DCS, aggregation
Subjects:	Nanoscience Nanoscience > Surface and Nanoanalysis
Identification number/DOI:	10.1016/1.4968882
Last Modified:	02 Feb 2018 13:13
URI:	http://eprintspublications.npl.co.uk/id/eprint/7355

Actions (login required)

View Item