Formation of Gold Nanoparticle Size and Density Gradients via Bipolar Electrochemistry

Journal article, 2016

Bipolar electrochemistry is employed to demonstrate the formation of gold nanoparticle size gradients on planar surfaces. By controlling the electric field in a HAuCl4-containing electrolyte, gold was reduced onto 10 nm diameter particles immobilized on pre-modified thiolated bipolar electrode (BPE) templates, resulting in larger particles towards the more cathodic direction. As the gold deposition was the dominating cathodic reaction, the increased size of the nanoparticles also reflected the current distribution on the bipolar electrode. The size gradients were also combined with a second gradient-forming technique to establish nanoparticle surfaces with orthogonal size and density gradients, resulting in a wide range of combinations of small/large and few/many particles on a single bipolar electrode. Such surfaces are valuable in, for example, cell-material interaction and combinatorial studies, where a large number of conditions are probed simultaneously.