A highly efficient ligand exchange reaction on gold nanoparticles: preserving their size, shape and colloidal stability

Abstract

This study presents a new ligand exchange method for cetyl trimethylammonium bromide/chloride (CTAB/C) stabilised gold nanoparticles. It has been shown that the resulting thiol-coated nanoparticles remained colloidally stable in aqueous dispersion and that particle size and morphology was not affected. Furthermore, we were able to achieve nearly complete ligand exchange.