The one/two atom size-reduction of [Au23SCy16]- induced by the [Au6(dppp)4]2+ cluster

Lichao Zhang; Daoqing Fan; Yanan Shi; Shuping He; Mengting Cui; Haizhu Yu; Manzhou Zhu

doi:10.1039/d3ra01606d

The one/two atom size-reduction of [Au₂₃SCy₁₆]^- induced by the [Au₆(dppp)₄]²⁺ cluster

RSC Adv. 2023 May 30;13(23):16034-16038. doi: 10.1039/d3ra01606d. eCollection 2023 May 22.

Authors

Lichao Zhang^{1

2}, Daoqing Fan¹, Yanan Shi¹, Shuping He¹, Mengting Cui¹, Haizhu Yu^{1

2}, Manzhou Zhu¹

Affiliations

¹ Department of Chemistry and Centre for Atomic Engineering of Advanced Materials, Key Laboratory of Structure and Functional Regulation of Hybrid Materials of Physical Science and Information Technology and Anhui Province Key Laboratory of Chemistry for Inorganic/Organic Hybrid Functionalized Materials, Anhui University Hefei 230601 China yuhaizhu@ahu.edu.cn.
² Institute of Energy, Hefei Comprehensive National Science Center Hefei 230601 China.

Abstract

The recent progress in atomically precise metal (Au, Ag etc.) nanoclusters has greatly enriched the molecular-level mechanistic understanding of metal nanomaterials. Herein, using two meta-stable (easy formation, easy transformation) clusters, i.e. [Au₂₃SCy₁₆]^- and [Au₆(dppp)₄]²⁺ (HSCy and dppp denote cyclohexanethiol and 1,3-bis(diphenylphosphino)propane), as the reaction precursors, the etching of Au₂₃ occurs smoothly, giving the one/two-atom size-reduced [Au₂₁SCy₁₂(dppp)₂]⁺ and [Au₂₂SCy₁₄(dppp)]²⁺ as the major products. Structural analysis and DFT calculations indicate that the active reaction site of Au₂₃ lies in the core-shell interference of the bi-capped icosahedral Au₁₅ core and the AuS₂ motifs. The fluorescence, band gap, and thermostability of the Au₂₁ cluster products are improved compared to that of the Au₂₃ precursors.