Internship/Master project: Stabilizing Gold Nanoparticles with Core-Shell Architectures

Work Activities

Gold nanoparticles (GNPs) exhibit plasmonic properties that enable strong light-matter interactions, making them promising candidates for photothermal catalysis. However, their optical response is highly sensitive to particle shape and therein lies a key stability challenge: GNPs begin to reshape at temperatures around 200 °C, which progressively alters their plasmonic characteristics and degrades their performance over time. In this project, you will investigate how coating GNPs with a protective shell (e.g. titania, TiO2) can improve their thermal stability. These core-shell nanoparticles will be studied using single-particle spectroscopy: because nanoparticle shape governs the plasmon resonance, spectral shifts measured before and after laser heating directly reveal morphological changes. Photothermal heating is achieved using a wavelength-tunable picosecon...