3D halos assembled from Fe3O4/Au NPs with enhanced catalytic and optical properties

Ren Cai; Dan Yang; Keng-Te Lin; Thai Son Cao; Yifan Lyv; Kangfu Chen; Yu Yang; Jia Ge; Lian Xia; George Christou; Yuliang Zhao; Zhuo Chen; Weihong Tan

doi:10.1039/c9nr05874e

3D halos assembled from Fe₃O₄/Au NPs with enhanced catalytic and optical properties

Nanoscale. 2019 Nov 21;11(43):20968-20976. doi: 10.1039/c9nr05874e. Epub 2019 Oct 29.

Authors

Ren Cai¹, Dan Yang², Keng-Te Lin², Thai Son Cao³, Yifan Lyv⁴, Kangfu Chen⁵, Yu Yang³, Jia Ge³, Lian Xia³, George Christou³, Yuliang Zhao⁶, Zhuo Chen⁷, Weihong Tan⁸

Affiliations

¹ Molecular Sciences and Biomedicine Laboratory (MBL), State Key Laboratory for Chemo/Biosensing and Chemometrics, College of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering and College of Biology, Aptamer Engineering Center of Hunan Province, Hunan University, Changsha 410082, China. tan@chem.ufl.edu and Department of Chemistry and Department of Physiology and Functional Genomics, Center for Research at the Bio/Nano Interface, Shands Cancer Center, UF Genetics Institute, McKnight Brain Institute, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL 32611-7200, USA.
² Centre for Micro-Photonics, Faculty of Science, Engineering and Technology, Swinburne University of Technology, PO Box 218, Hawthorn, Australia.
³ Department of Chemistry and Department of Physiology and Functional Genomics, Center for Research at the Bio/Nano Interface, Shands Cancer Center, UF Genetics Institute, McKnight Brain Institute, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL 32611-7200, USA.
⁴ Molecular Sciences and Biomedicine Laboratory (MBL), State Key Laboratory for Chemo/Biosensing and Chemometrics, College of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering and College of Biology, Aptamer Engineering Center of Hunan Province, Hunan University, Changsha 410082, China. tan@chem.ufl.edu and Institute of Molecular Medicine (IMM), State Key Laboratory of Oncogenes and Related Genes Renji Hospital, Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine, and College of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai 200240, China.
⁵ Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida 32611-6250, USA.
⁶ National Center for Nanoscience and Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China.
⁷ Molecular Sciences and Biomedicine Laboratory (MBL), State Key Laboratory for Chemo/Biosensing and Chemometrics, College of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering and College of Biology, Aptamer Engineering Center of Hunan Province, Hunan University, Changsha 410082, China. tan@chem.ufl.edu.
⁸ Molecular Sciences and Biomedicine Laboratory (MBL), State Key Laboratory for Chemo/Biosensing and Chemometrics, College of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering and College of Biology, Aptamer Engineering Center of Hunan Province, Hunan University, Changsha 410082, China. tan@chem.ufl.edu and Institute of Molecular Medicine (IMM), State Key Laboratory of Oncogenes and Related Genes Renji Hospital, Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine, and College of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai 200240, China and Department of Chemistry and Department of Physiology and Functional Genomics, Center for Research at the Bio/Nano Interface, Shands Cancer Center, UF Genetics Institute, McKnight Brain Institute, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL 32611-7200, USA.

PMID: 31660559
DOI: 10.1039/c9nr05874e

Abstract

3D structures assembled from multiple components have attracted increasing research interest based on their enriched functionalities and broadened applications. Here, we report a bottom-up strategy to fabricate 3D halos through the co-assembly of Fe₃O₄ and Au nanoparticles (NPs). Typically, Fe₃O₄ NPs assemble into a 3D core (size around 500 nm) with simultaneous growth of Au NPs on the 3D surface during the assembly process. As a general approach, a variety of 3D halos were fabricated from the co-assembly of Fe₃O₄ and Au NPs of different sizes and shapes. To demonstrate the advantages of these 3D halo structures, their catalytic activity to mimic natural enzymes was investigated. Compared with Fe₃O₄ NP building blocks, enhanced catalytic efficiency was achieved by the 3D halos. In addition, the optical behavior of the 3D halos was simulated using a three-dimensional finite-difference time-domain (3D-FDTD) method. As shown in the results, the 3D halos attached to 90 nm Au NPs could absorb more incident light owing to high electric field intensities, making these structures promising for applications in energy harvesting and detection-related fields.