TY - JOUR
T1 - Effect of Ligands on the Stability of Gold Nanoclusters
AU - Pensa, Evangelina
AU - Azofra Mesa, Luis
AU - Salvarezza, Roberto C.
AU - Carro, Pilar
N1 - KAUST Repository Item: Exported on 2022-09-14
Acknowledgements: E.P. would like to thank LMU Gateway and Prof. Tim Liedl for his support. R.C.S. thanks for the financial support from ANPCyT (PICT 2016-0679). L.M.A. thanks the KAUST Supercomputing Laboratory using the supercomputer Shaheen II for providing the computational resources.
This publication acknowledges KAUST support, but has no KAUST affiliated authors.
PY - 2022/7/11
Y1 - 2022/7/11
N2 - Gold nanoclusters (AuNCs) are atomic architectures that can be precisely tailored for catalytic applications. In this work, we studied two benchmark AuNCs, Au25(SR)18 and Au144(SR)60, covered by aromatic and aliphatic ligands to envision how the 3D structure of the ligand impacts the stability of the nanomaterial. Surprisingly, we found that increasing the alkanethiol length has a poor or null effect on the stability of the AuNCs, a trend opposite to that on Au(111) surfaces. When considering the aromatic or aliphatic nature, the AuNC stability follows the same trend as on Au(111): the thermodynamical stability is dictated by the ligand density rather than its chemical nature, where the aliphatic ligand imparts more stability than the aromatic one. Our findings provide a tool to predict how an ultrasmall gold core can interact with the environment, substrate, and themselves according to the stability of its protecting ligand shell.
AB - Gold nanoclusters (AuNCs) are atomic architectures that can be precisely tailored for catalytic applications. In this work, we studied two benchmark AuNCs, Au25(SR)18 and Au144(SR)60, covered by aromatic and aliphatic ligands to envision how the 3D structure of the ligand impacts the stability of the nanomaterial. Surprisingly, we found that increasing the alkanethiol length has a poor or null effect on the stability of the AuNCs, a trend opposite to that on Au(111) surfaces. When considering the aromatic or aliphatic nature, the AuNC stability follows the same trend as on Au(111): the thermodynamical stability is dictated by the ligand density rather than its chemical nature, where the aliphatic ligand imparts more stability than the aromatic one. Our findings provide a tool to predict how an ultrasmall gold core can interact with the environment, substrate, and themselves according to the stability of its protecting ligand shell.
UR - http://hdl.handle.net/10754/679646
UR - https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.jpclett.2c01616
U2 - 10.1021/acs.jpclett.2c01616
DO - 10.1021/acs.jpclett.2c01616
M3 - Article
C2 - 35816759
SN - 1948-7185
SP - 6475
EP - 6480
JO - The Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters
JF - The Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters
ER -