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Determination of the surface density of polyethylene glycol on gold nanoparticles by use of microscale thermogravimetric analysis

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Abstract

The widespread integration of nanoparticle technologies into biomedicine will depend on the ability to repeatedly create particles with well-defined properties and predictable behaviors. For this to happen, fast, reliable, inexpensive, and widely available techniques to characterize nanomaterials are needed. Characterization of the surface molecules is particularly important since the surface, including the surface molecule density, plays a dominant role in determining how nanoparticles interact with their surroundings. Here, 10 and 30 nm gold nanoparticle NIST Standard Reference Materials were functionalized with fluorescently labeled polyethylene glycol (PEG) with either thiolate or lipoic acid anchoring groups to evaluate analytical techniques for determining surface coverage. The coating of the nanoparticles was confirmed with dynamic light scattering, microscale thermogravimetric analysis (μ-TGA), and ultraviolet–visible (UV–vis) spectroscopy. A UV–vis method for determining gold nanoparticle concentrations that takes into account spectral broadening upon functionalization was developed. The amount of bound PEG was quantified with μ-TGA, a technique analogous to thermogravimetric analysis that uses quartz crystal microbalances, and fluorescence spectroscopy of displaced ligands. It is shown that μ-TGA is a convenient technique for the quantification of ligands bound to inorganic particles while sacrificing a minimal amount of sample, and the treatment of the functionalized nanoparticle dispersions with dithiothreitol may be insufficient to achieve complete displacement of the surface ligands for quantification by fluorescence measurements. The μ-TGA and fluorescence results were used to determine ligand footprint sizes—average areas occupied by each ligand on the particles’ surface. The lipoic acid bound ligands had footprint sizes of 0.21 and 0.25 nm2 on 10 and 30 nm particles, respectively while the thiolate ligands had footprint sizes of 0.085 and 0.18 nm2.

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Acknowledgments

Karl Sebby gratefully acknowledges the NRC Research Associateship Program for funding.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Applied Chemicals and Materials Division, National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), Boulder, CO, 80305, USA

    K. B. Sebby & E. Mansfield

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  1. K. B. Sebby
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  2. E. Mansfield
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Correspondence to E. Mansfield.

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Sebby, K.B., Mansfield, E. Determination of the surface density of polyethylene glycol on gold nanoparticles by use of microscale thermogravimetric analysis. Anal Bioanal Chem 407, 2913–2922 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00216-015-8520-x

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