Friday, 27th May 2005 (4503 views)

A research group from the Purdue University in Indiana, have found a century old chemistry could stick better to gold and offer a boost to nanotechnology.

Scientists are constantly looking for materials that will bond to gold more robustly and have found amines, a large and important class of organic molecules, prove a good choice when mixed with carbon disulfide.

Gold is often used for baseplates for sensors and in nanomaterials and research shows that the dithiocarbamates created work better than thiols that are more typically used.

Team leader, Alexander Wei, told Phys Org: "Amines could allow us to expand the range of molecules which can be incorporated into sensors for the biotech field.

"Amines react with carbon disulfide to form dithiocarbamates (DTCs) and appear to be better suited for coating surfaces than thiols, which have been the standard thus far. The DTC chemistry itself has been around for over 100 years, but we think it can offer many opportunities for current applications in biosensors and nanotechnology."

Thiols that are currently used have a more "intermittent hold" on gold surfaces and have a weaker chemical bond, whereas the DTCs grasp gold surfaces more strongly with "more like a vice grip".

DTCs application to surface chemistry has previously been overlooked.

 

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