Microemulsion route to fabrication of biocompatible spherical gold nanoparticles

Preparation of gold nanoparticles has attracted a great deal of interest due to their interesting opticalproperties and potential in biomedical applications. For this purpose, one challenge is to find a non-toxic chemicaland/or physical method for functionalizing gold nanoparticles with biomolecule compounds. In the current study, a newmicroemulsion system composed of tetraocthyl ammonium bromide was introduced and studied in details. By usingthis microemulsion system a novel methodology was applied to prepare biocompatible gold clusters protected by amonolayer of monohydroxy thioalkylated PEG ligand. The morphology, size and size distribution of the preparedfunctionalized gold nanoparticles were obtained by different methods including dynamic light scattering (DLS), UVvisiblespectrophotometry and transmission electron microscopy (TEM).

Keywords:

Gold nanoparticles , Microemulsion , Thioalkylated polyethylene glycol , Biocompatible nanoparticles