Influence of Single Use and Combination of Reductants on the Size, Morphology and Growth Steps of Gold Nanoparticles in Colloidal Mixture

A comprehensive investigation on the formation mechanism of gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) in colloidal mixture obtained from the reduction of chloroauric acid (HAuCl4) solution using a single reducing agent (sodium citrate; process-I), (tannic acid; process-II), and a combination of two reducing agents (sodium citrate plus tannic acid; process-III) is reported. The growth steps at different time intervals during synthesis of colloidal AuNPs were monitored in situ and ex situ using various methods for all the three processes. The measurement of changes in the surface plasmon band position of colloidal AuNPs, along with dynamic light scattering results gave important information for the first assessing of particle size, shape and distribution. Besides, the size and morphological changes at different stages during different processes were also analyzed by transmission electron microscopy. The final Au particles of processes-I & II exhibited different shapes (spherical and nanowires) with particle size and nano wire diameter of 12 nm and 17 nm, respectively. Nevertheless, combination of two reductants (process-III) surprisingly leads to drastically reduced size (ca. 3 nm) with spherical morphology compared to their parent solutions with either of single reducing agent. This result clearly indicates that the combination of reductants has a significant influence on the particle size, morphology and formation mechanism.