Synthesis of Functionalized Gold Nanoparticles with Neutral, Cationic and Ionic Polymeric Ligands

Gold nanoparticles (GNPs) are playing a very important role in biological and biomedical areas in recent years. In this study, we synthesize the various types of GNPs with surface-modification ligands (such as citrate, polyphosphate (polyP), poly(ethylene glycol) (PEG), poly(acrylic acid) (PAAc), polyacrylamide (PAAm)). These particles will serve as a platform to understand the effects of particles on blood clotting kinetics. In the first part of this dissertation (chapter 1), comment applications, synthesize methods, and characterization and purification methods of GNPs were reviewed. Then in chapter 2, our studies of citrate GNPs synthesis and characterization were reported. During the particle synthesis, trisodium citrate acid was used as the reduction reagent to reduce the GNPs from chloroauric acid (HAuCl4) by the method of thermo heating. GNPs of different sizes were produced by changing the mole ratios of chloroauric acid and citrate acid. The effects of reaction temperature and pH on particles size and size distribution were studied and reported. The citrate GNPs were replaced by different polymeric ligands to study the effects of ligands on the clotting kinetics blood clotting test. In chapter 3, we use the sodium borohydride (NaBH4) as the reagent to reduce the gold nanoparticles from the chloroauric acid. Four kinds of modified polymeric ligands (polyp, PEG, PAAc, PAAm) were bound to the GNPs in water phase directly. The last part is the conclusion of this study. We proposed the possible directions for future works.