Impact of the polar core size and external organic media composition on the micelle-micelle interactions. Effect on gold nanoparticles synthesis.

GUTIERREZ, JORGE; LUNA, MARIA ALEJANDRA; CORREA, N. MARIANO; SILBER, JUANA J.; FALCONE, R. DARIO.

NEW JOURNAL OF CHEMISTRY

ROYAL SOC CHEMISTRY

Lugar: CAMBRIDGE; Año: 2015 vol. 39 p. 8887 - 8895

1144-0546

We report the effect of the molar ratio parameter W0 (W0 = [water] / [surfactant]) and the external organic media composition on the benzyl-n-hexadecyldimethylammonium chloride (BHDC) reverse micelles (RMs) interactions, the key step on nanoparticles synthesis using RMs as nanoreactors. The results show a better interaction between BHDC RMs droplets when the external media contain toluene:hexane blends instead pure toluene. This organic solvent mixture enhance the material exchange between droplets and more well defined and smaller gold nanoparticles were obtained at two W0 studied (3 and 6). On the other hand, BHDC RMs created in pure toluene makes a stiffer environment with poor droplet-droplet interaction, and the Cl- counterions affect the growth of the particles, leading to different morphologies and gold sub-nanometer species production. These results are very promising for many applications. This work shows how each RM system is a unique and tunable nanoreactor.