Critical Assessment of the Evidence for Striped Nanoparticles
Name
Stirling-2014-Critical Assessment.pdf
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7.8 MB
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Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
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Author(s)
Stirling, Julian
Lekkas, Ioannis
Sweetman, Adam
Djuranovic, Predrag
Guo, Quanmin
Pauw, Brian
Granwehr, Josef
Moriarty, Philip
Levy, Raphael
Date Issued
November 2014
Journal
PLoS ONE
Publisher
Public Library of Science
Citation
Stirling, Julian, Ioannis Lekkas, Adam Sweetman, Predrag Djuranovic, Quanmin Guo, Brian Pauw, Josef Granwehr, Raphaël Lévy, and Philip Moriarty. “Critical Assessment of the Evidence for Striped Nanoparticles.” Edited by Sangaru Shiv Shankar. PLoS ONE 9, no. 11 (November 17, 2014): e108482.
Version
Final published version
Abstract
There is now a significant body of literature which reports that stripes form in the ligand shell of suitably functionalised Au nanoparticles. This stripe morphology has been proposed to strongly affect the physicochemical and biochemical properties of the particles. We critique the published evidence for striped nanoparticles in detail, with a particular focus on the interpretation of scanning tunnelling microscopy (STM) data (as this is the only technique which ostensibly provides direct evidence for the presence of stripes). Through a combination of an exhaustive re-analysis of the original data, in addition to new experimental measurements of a simple control sample comprising entirely unfunctionalised particles, we show that all of the STM evidence for striped nanoparticles published to date can instead be explained by a combination of well-known instrumental artefacts, or by issues with data acquisition/analysis protocols. We also critically re-examine the evidence for the presence of ligand stripes which has been claimed to have been found from transmission electron microscopy, nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy, small angle neutron scattering experiments, and computer simulations. Although these data can indeed be interpreted in terms of stripe formation, we show that the reported results can alternatively be explained as arising from a combination of instrumental artefacts and inadequate data analysis techniques.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Materials Science and Engineering
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Creative Commons Attribution
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DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0108482
