An investigation of atomically precise mono and multimetallic nanoclusters

Abstract

Atomically precise nanoclusters protected by the monolayer of ligands are regarded as potential building blocks for advanced technologies Among noble metal nanoclusters till date various ligandprotected Au Ag and Cu nanoclusters having different shapes and properties have been synthesized Due to the ligand protection and ultrasmall sizes 2nm they possess discrete energy levels and moleculelike optical properties magnetism chirality luminescence and so on These properties strongly depend on the composition shapes and sizes of the nanoclusters The design of a simple synthesis protocol for precise control of cluster atomicity has become one of the prime interests of research Moreover understanding the evolution of their physical and chemical properties is another significant fundamental work in this area newlineThe principle focus of this thesis is to understand the various aspects of atomically precise mono and multimetallic nanoclusters and chemical reactions of these nanoclusters Initially we present the synthesis of Ag nanoclusters with completely new nuclearity These nanoclusters were used to understand the role of the metalligand interface in determining their nuclearity and structureproperty relationships Subsequently we extended our research to understand intercluster reactions between nanoclusters In this work we used intercluster reaction to synthesize various multimetallic alloy nanoclusters which helped to expand the family of nanoclusters Furthermore we present mechanistic details of intercluster reactions involving bimetallic and monometallic nanoclusters that resulted in the synthesis of trimetallic ones Finally we show the application of nanoclusters as fluorophores for white light emission The specific objectives of our study the methodology adopted and critical observations are presented briefly in the subsequent sections newlineChapter 3 describes the synthesis of a new silver cluster Ag5925DCBT32 3 25 DCBT 25dichlorobenzenethiol which acts as a precursor for the synthesis of three well known silver clusters