1. From solid gold to nanometric gold

One of the characteristics of nanoscience is that new properties emerge when the size of an object falls below a "boundary" of a few tens of nanometers. This may come as a surprise, because intuitively, we tend to think that the "whole" must replicate the properties of its constituent parts. But it is precisely this intuition that nanoscience seems to be disproving. Gold nanoparticles (NPs) provide a good illustration of the emergence of new properties as we move towards nanometric scales. Before going into more detail, this paragraph highlights three factors that cause these unexpected properties to emerge from the nanoscale: electromagnetic confinement, the predominance of surface effects and, finally, quantum effects. The body of the article will describe these properties in greater depth and illustrate them with applications.

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From solid gold to nanometric gold

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page Gold nanoparticles

Some gold nanoparticle synthesis processes

Bibliography

(1) - BUFFAT (P.), BOREL (J.P.) - Size Effect on Melting Temperature of Gold Particles - Physical Review A 13 2287-98 (1976).
(2) - BRAYNER (R.), BARBEROUSSE (H.), HERNADI (M.), DJEDJAT (C.), YEPREMIAN (C.), CORADIN (T.), LIVAGE (J.), FIEVET (F.), COUTE (A.) -...

Websites

Or-Nano, CNRS Research Group

http://www.or-nano.org

World Gold Council, official website

http://www.gold.org

Gold Bulletin, the Journal of Gold Science, Technology and Applications (free access)

Events

International congress entitled "Gold" dealing with scientific research and applications of gold. The congress is held every 3 years. Gold 2009 took place in July 2009 in Heidelberg (Germany). Announcement of the congress relayed on http://www.gold.org .

Organizations – Federations – Associations (non-exhaustive list)

The Or-Nano research group's website contains a directory of French researchers from public institutions working on gold nanoparticles. See http://www.or-nano.org .