Role of Linear Carbon Chains in the Aggregation of Copper, Silver, and Gold Nanoparticles

Most of the applications involving metal nanoparticles require a high resistance to aggregation and oxidation phenomena to preserve and modulate the peculiar reactivity, electronic, optical, and magnetic properties of nanoparticles. Linear carbon chains (LCCs) containing sp hybridization either as alternating triple and single bonds (polyynes) or with consecutive double bonds (cumulenes) are good candidates to create a shell that prevents such unwanted degradation phenomena. In addition, the development of reliable experimental protocols for their synthesis over a range of sizes and high monodispersity is an important challenging issue in most of the biological applications. In this Article, we investigate the interaction between LCCs and different metal nanoparticles (Cu, Au, Ag) to provide an insight into the factors influencing chemical (reactivity) and physical (optical) properties of the metal/LCCs core/shell systems produced at different experimental conditions. For this purpose, a range of different complementary experimental techniques Such as Raman and UV-vis spectroscopy, transmission electron microscopy. and mass spectrometry are applied, and details oil the different LCCs produced as well as insights into the metal-carbon bonds formed are unveiled.