Document Type

Dissertation

Degree

Doctor of Philosophy

Major

Chemistry

Date of Defense

7-15-2014

Graduate Advisor

Keith J. Stine

Committee

Harold H. Harris

Chung F. Wong

Alexei V. Demchenko

Abstract

Nanoporous gold (NPG) has immense technological applications owing to a plethora of properties like large surface area to volume ratio, plasmonic properties, stable gold-thiolate bond formation and a wide range of pore sizes. The surface morphology of nanoporous gold has been altered previously by dealloying and thermal annealing to increase/decrease the pore size and change the surface area. We provide a novel electrochemical annealing technique for post dealloying modification wherein electrochemical sweep cycles in different electrolytes at positive potentials leads to a subsequent increase in pore sizes of nanoporous gold as studied using scanning electron microscopy. Tailoring the surface of nanoporous gold allows us to characterize and study self-assembled monolayers of alkanethiols, including those terminated by carbohydrate moieties. The orientation of these thiols on nanoporous gold is not uniform due to the interconnected framework of pores and ligaments and we try to offer a fair comparison between flat gold and nanoporous gold to determine the surface coverage of these self-assembled monolayers. Carbohydrate-lectin interactions have been studied with the help of dendrimers as linkers. Dendrimers (polyamidoamine generation 4 and 5) have been used as linkers due to their multivalent interactions with carbohydrate moieties and impedance spectroscopy as well as atomic force microscopy techniques have been utilized to study dendrimers attached on nanoporous gold surface using covalent immobilization. This study aims at providing a comprehensive surface property analysis of nanoporous gold.

OCLC Number

884731902

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