Abstract
Metal nanoparticles coated with an organic monolayer, so-called monolayer protected clusters
(MPCs), can show quantised charging at room temperature due to their sub-attofarad capacitance
arising from the core size and the nature of the protecting monolayer. In this tutorial review, we
examine the factors affecting the energetics of MPC charging. In the first section, the underlying
physics of quantised charging is outlined and we give an overview of the various methods that
can be used to measure single electron transfer to nanoparticles. In the subsequent sections, we
discuss how electrochemical measurements can be used to give information on the quantised
charging of freely diffusing and films of immobilised MPCs. The predictions of models used to
determine MPC capacitance are compared with experimental data from the literature.
Original language | Undefined/Unknown |
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Pages (from-to) | 1836-1846 |
Number of pages | 12 |
Journal | Chemical Society Reviews |
Volume | 37 |
Issue number | 9 |
Publication status | Published - 2008 |