Effect of gold ion concentration on size and properties of gold nanoparticles in TritonX-100 based inverse microemulsions

Gold nanoparticles have been prepared successfully using TritonX-100 inverse microemulsion at different concentrations of HAuCl4 (0.1, 0.05, 0.04, 0.03, 0.02 and 0.01 M). We have studied the effect of gold ion concentration on the particle size, morphology, surface area and optical properties of the gold nanoparticles. The gold nanoparticles were characterized by X-ray diffraction, transmission electron microscopy, UV-Visible spectroscopy and Brunauer-Emmett-Teller surface area analysis. X-ray diffraction studies show the monophasic nature of the gold nanoparticles. TritonX-100 stabilized gold nanoparticles were appeared to be agglomerated at higher concentrations (0.1 and 0.05 M) of Au3+ with an average grain size of 60 and 50 nm, respectively. Monodisperse and uniform gold nanoparticles with well-defined morphologies of an average grain size of 15 and 25 nm were obtained at lower concentrations (0.01 and 0.02 M). UV-Visible spectroscopy shows the characteristic surface plasmon resonance peak similar to 540 nm along with the peaks at shorter and longer wavelengths may be due to the higher order plasmon resonance of the gold nanoparticles. The surface areas of the gold nanoparticles were found to be in the range of 5.8-107 m(2)/g which were well in agreement with the electron microscopic studies.