| Ligand-capped metal and metal-oxide nanoparticles (NPs) have some interesting and useful physical properties that are not present in their respective bulk materials. These properties are of research interest in many applications such as catalysis, drug delivery, biological imaging, and plasmonics. In such applications, it is critical to understand the surface structure of NPs and the roles played by the surface bound ligands. To characterize surface environment, ligand dynamics, and exchange kinetics, ligand-capped metal and metal-oxide NPs are synthesized and studied by multinuclear NMR.;Phosphines and phosphonic acids are used to passivate metal (gold and silver) and metal-oxide (tin dioxide) NPs in different sizes (1-5 nm) by following published procedures or original synthesis methods. In both solution and solid state NMR, the 31P chemical shift of surface-bound ligands are distinctly different from those observed for free ligands. Additionally, NMR line widths in surface-bound ligands are highly broadened compared to those of free ligands. The lines are broadened due to both homogeneous and inhomogeneous broadening mechanisms, determined through hole burning NMR and spin-spin relaxation measurements. In small particles (< 2 nm), the main source of line broadening is inhomogeneous and originates due to structural heterogeneity and underlying chemical shift distributions. In large particles (> 2 nm), both inhomogeneous and homogeneous line broadening mechanisms are present. When the particles' sizes increase from small to large, the homogeneous broadening mechanism becomes dominant due to strong nuclear-electron interaction and reintroduction of residual dipolar coupling as shown by a combination of 1H, 13C and 31P NMR. Results from a series of ligand exchange experiments in silver and gold NPs further indicate the presence of Au(I) and Ag(I) on the particle surfaces. |
