title: Quantifying "Softness" of Organic Coatings on Gold Nanoparticles Using Correlated Small-Angle X-ray and Neutron Scattering.
abstract: Small-angle X-ray and neutron scattering provide powerful tools to selectively characterize the inorganic and organic components of hybrid nanomaterials. Using hydrophobic gold nanoparticles coated with several commercial and dendritic thiols, the size of the organic layer on the gold particles is shown to increase from 1.2 to 4.1 nm. A comparison between solid-state diffraction from self-assembled lattices of nanoparticles and the solution data from neutron scattering suggests that engineering softness/deformability in nanoparticle coatings is less straightforward than simply increasing the organic size. The "dendritic effect" in which higher generations yield increasingly compact molecules explains changes in the deformability of organic ligand shells.
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemistry, University of Pennsylvania , Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104, United States.
authors.forename: Benjamin T
authors.initials: BT
authors.lastname: Diroll
authors.affiliation: NIST, Center for Neutron Research, National Institute of Standards and Technology , Gaithersburg, Maryland 20899-6102, United States.
authors.forename: Katie M
authors.initials: KM
authors.lastname: Weigandt
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemistry, University of Pennsylvania , Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104, United States.|Complex Assemblies of Soft Matter Laboratory (COMPASS), CNRS-SOLVAY-University of Pennsylvania, UMI 3254, CRTB , Bristol, Pennsylvania 19007, United States.
authors.forename: Davit
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Jishkariani
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemistry, University of Pennsylvania , Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104, United States.
authors.forename: Matteo
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Cargnello
authors.affiliation: Complex Assemblies of Soft Matter Laboratory (COMPASS), CNRS-SOLVAY-University of Pennsylvania, UMI 3254, CRTB , Bristol, Pennsylvania 19007, United States.
authors.forename: Ryan J
authors.initials: RJ
authors.lastname: Murphy
authors.affiliation: Complex Assemblies of Soft Matter Laboratory (COMPASS), CNRS-SOLVAY-University of Pennsylvania, UMI 3254, CRTB , Bristol, Pennsylvania 19007, United States.
authors.forename: Lawrence A
authors.initials: LA
authors.lastname: Hough
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemistry, University of Pennsylvania , Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104, United States.|Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of Pennsylvania , Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104, United States.
authors.forename: Christopher B
authors.initials: CB
authors.lastname: Murray
authors.affiliation: Complex Assemblies of Soft Matter Laboratory (COMPASS), CNRS-SOLVAY-University of Pennsylvania, UMI 3254, CRTB , Bristol, Pennsylvania 19007, United States.|Institut de Physique et Chimie des Matériaux de Strasbourg (IPCMS), CNRS-Université de Strasbourg, UMR 7504 , 67034 Strasbourg cedex 2, France.
authors.forename: Bertrand
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Donnio
keywords: Small-angle X-ray scattering; dendrimer; gold nanoparticles; self-assembly; small-angle neutron scattering; superlattice