Self-assembly of lipid conjugated gold nanoparticles

COLL 192

Subhasish Chatterjee, subhas1012@yahoo.com, Chemistry, The Graduate Center of CUNY and Queens College, 65 -30, Kissena Blvd, Remsen 206, Flushing, NY 11367, Markrete Krikorian, violetsareblue16@yahoo.com, Townsend Harris High School, 149 -11 , Melbourne Avenue, Flushing, NY 11367, and Bonnie L Gersten, bonniegersten@gmail.com, Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, Queens College, 6035 Kissena Blvd, Flushing, NY 11367.
The self-assembly of bio-conjugated colloidal nanomaterials has versatile technological potential for the development of novel micro and nanostructures, molecular machines, and biosensing devices. Here we report the synthesis of gold nanoparticles directly conjugated to lipid molecules and the formation of a self-assembled monolayer of nanostructures. The nanoparticles were prepared by a phase transfer method, which involved the reduction of potassium tetrachloroaurate(III) by sodium citrate in an aqueous solution and the simultaneous transfer of the reduced species to an organic medium containing DMPC (1,2-dimyristoyl-sn-glycero-3-phosphocholine). The resulting nanoparticles were characterized using Uv-vis spectroscopy and dynamic light scattering particle-size analysis. The diameters of the nanoparticles ranged from 25 to 30 nm. The Langmuir-Blodgett technique was utilized to allow the self-assembly of DMPC-capped nanoparticles onto a water subphase at room temperature, and the formation of a monolayer was monitored by the measurement of the compression isotherm. This method of synthesis of ordered structures utilizing biomolecular interactions would be useful in manufacturing novel metamaterials and nanocircuits.