Indicated in Figure 1b are the projected (200) plane for Au and the (101) plane for ZnO and in Figure 1c the (111) plane for Au and the (101) plane for ZnO, individually. The observation directly illustrates the coexistence of Au and Zn in the same nanocrystals, with the incorporation Evofosfamide manufacturer of both cubic Au nanocrystallites and ZnO hexagonal wurtzite nanostructure as further corroborated in the following XRD examination. The phenomena imply

that Au does not intermix strongly with ZnO, but light doping and/or partial alloying is still possible. Figure 1d shows a typical TEM-EDX point-detection instance for the composition, clearly exposing the simultaneous presence of both zinc and gold elements. Figure 1 TEM analysis of the polymer-laced ZnO-Au hybrid nanoparticles. (a) Bright-field image. (b, c) HRTEM of individual nanoparticles. (d) Point-detection EDX analysis of the composition. The nanoparticles were further investigated by the X-ray crystal structural analysis. As shown in Figure 2a, the diffraction peaks of the ZnO-Au nanoparticles may be indexed to two sets, one in the inverted triangles corresponding to the Au positions of the www.selleckchem.com/products/INCB18424.html (111), (200), and (220) planes, and the other in the squares corresponding to the ZnO positions of the (100), (101), and (110) planes. The findings are substantiated by the diffraction pattern of Figure 1b recorded for the Au nanoparticles prepared from

gold acetate (JCPDS no. 01-1172) and that of Figure 1c obtained for ZnO nanoparticles synthesized from zinc acetylacetonate (JCPDS no. 36-1451). As regards to the result of the hybrid nanoparticles, the dominant Au intensities may be attributed to the much stronger scattering power of the material than that of ZnO [29]. The observation of the ZnO (100) family of planes and the absence of the ZnO (002) family of planes clearly supports the nanostructuring of ZnO and Au in a single motif. In addition, the average particle size of the

ZnO-Au nanoparticles is estimated to be approximately 8.9 nm by the Scherrer equation based on the full width at half maximum (FWHM), comparable to that from the statistical size SB-3CT counting of the TEM analysis above, supposing that the broadening of the peaks in the XRD pattern is predominantly due to the finite size of the nanoparticles [30]. Figure 2 X-ray diffraction see more patterns of the various nanoparticles. (a) ZnO-Au. (b) Au (bar diagram for the JCPDS of bulk Au). (c) ZnO (bar diagram for the JCPDS of bulk ZnO). Au in inverted triangles and ZnO in squares. The determination of existence of the PEO-PPO-PEO macromolecules on the surface of the ZnO-Au nanoparticles was undertaken by comparatively assessing the FTIR spectra of the pure PEO-PPO-PEO polymer and the polymer-laced ZnO-Au nanoparticles after purification [22–27]. In Figure 3a, the pure PEO-PPO-PEO polymer molecules display one strong characteristic band at the position of approximately 1,108.