10th ICFPAM, Santiago, CHILE, 2009

10th International Conference on Frontiers of Polymers and Advanced Materials

SYNTHESIS AND CHARACTERIZATION OF GOLD-COPOLYMER NANOPARTICLES. INFLUENCE

OF THE COPOLYMERS STRUCTURE.

C. Saldías, A. Leiva, L. Gargallo and D. Radic’

Departamento de Química Física, Facultad de Química, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile.
Vicuña Mackenna 4860, Macul, Santiago, Chile. Fax: 56-2-6864744.
corresponding author: C. Saldías, casaldia@uc.cl

Our work is focused in the synthesis and characterization of gold-copolymer nanoparticles, using
biodegradable block copolymers.

Metal nanoparticles have been of great interest for decades due to their use in catalysis, photography,
surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS), and other applications. Several studies of metal nanoparticles
indicate that their properties are strongly dependent of the parameters, such as, size, shape, cristallinity and
structure.

In this work, we reported a method for synthesis of gold-copolymer nanoparticles composed by direct
reduction of potassium tethrachloroaureate III (KAuCl4) with biodegradable block copolymers, both in
aqueous solution. The copolymers contain Poly (vinyl pyrrolidone) (PVP) and Poly (-caprolactone) (PCL)
blocks. In this process of synthesis the copolymers act as both, stabilizer and reducer agent. Figure 1 shows
the structure of the used copolymers.

Figure 1. Structure of the block copolymers, PVP-PCL-PVP (A) and PCL-(PVP)3 (B).

The gold-copolymer nanoparticles were characterized by TEM, AFM and UV-visible. From images of TEM
and UV-visible spectra, Figures 2 and 3 respectively, it is possible to observe the strong influence of the
copolymer structure, on the shape and size of the obtained nanoparticles.

Figure 3. UV-visible spectra of the gold

Figure 2. Images of TEM of the gold nanoparticles nanoparticles obtained at different ratios between
obtained with copolymers of different structures. gold :copolymer.

1. I. Washio, Y. Xiong, Y. Yin, Y. Xia, Adv. Mater. 2006, 18, 1745-1749.

2. Y. Xiong, I. Washio, J. Chen, H. Cai, Z. Li, Y. Xia, Langmuir 2006, 22, 8563-8570.
3. T. Sakai and P. Alexandridis Langmuir 2005, 21, 8019-8025.
4. T. Azzam and A. Eisenberg Langmuir 2007, 23, 2126-2132.

Acknowledgment.
The authors thank to Project FONDECYT 1080238 for partial financial support of this research. C. S. thanks to 1Conicyt for
Doctoral fellowship.