Journal
ACS NANO
Volume 3, Issue 4, Pages 828-834Publisher
AMER CHEMICAL SOC
DOI: 10.1021/nn900066w
Keywords
gold nanorods; self-assembly; linear dichroism; nanogap; molecular electronics
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Funding
- European Community [FP7/2007-2013, 213609]
- Danish Research Councils
- Knut and Alice Wallenberg foundation
- The Greater Nagoya Invitation Program for International Research Scientists in Environmental Science Field
- Chubu Science and Technology Center Foundation
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Gold nanorods (AuNRs) are of interest for a wide range of applications, ranging from imaging to molecular electronics, and they have been studied extensively for the past decade. An important issue in AuNR applications is the ability to self-assemble the rods in predictable structures on the nanoscale. We here present a new way to end-to-end link AuNRs with a single or few linker molecules. Whereas methods reported in the literature so far rely on modification of the AuNRs after the synthesis, we here dimerize gold nanoparticle seeds with a water-soluble dithiol-functionalized polyethylene glycol linker and expose the linked seeds to growth conditions identical to the synthesis of unlinked AuNRs. Doing so, we obtain a large fraction of end-to-end linked rods, and transmission electron microscopy provides evidence of a 1-2 nm wide gap between the AuNRs. Flow linear dichroism demonstrates that a large fraction of the rods are flexible around the hinging molecule in solution, as expected for a molecularly linked nanogap. By using excess of gold nanoparticles relative to the linking dithiol molecule, this method can provide a high probability that a single molecule is connecting the two rods. In essence, our methods hence demonstrate the fabrication of a nanostructure with a molecule connected to two nanoelectrodes by bottom-up chemical assembly.
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