N-Heterocyclic carbenes (NHCs) have become one of the most widely studied class of ligands in molecular chemistry and have found applications in fields as varied as catalysis, the stabilization of reactive molecular fragments, and biochemistry. More recently, NHCs have found applications in materials chemistry and have allowed for the functionalization of surfaces, polymers, nanoparticles, and discrete, well-defined clusters. In this review, we provide an in-depth look at recent advances in the use of NHCs for the development of functional materials.

Highly stable gold nanoparticles (Au NPs) functionalized by bidentate N-heterocyclic carbene (NHC) ligands have been synthesized by top-down and bottom-up approaches. A detailed study of the effect of alkylation, denticity, and method of synthesis has led to the production of NHC-stabilized nanoparticles with higher thermal stability than bi- and tridentate thiol-protected Au NPs and than monodentate NHC-stabilized NPs. Importantly, bidentate NHC-protected NPs also displayed unprecedented stability to external thiol, which has been an unsolved problem to date with all nanoparticles. Thus, multidentate NHC ligands are an important, and as yet unrecognized, step forward for the preparation of high stability nanomaterials.

NHC-Au complexes were used to prepare stable, water-soluble, NHC-protected gold nanoparticles. The water-soluble, charged nature of the nanoparticles permitted analysis by polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (PAGE), which showed that the nanoparticles were highly monodisperse, with tunable core diameters between 2.0 and 3.3 nm depending on the synthesis conditions. Temporal, thermal, and chemical stability of the nanoparticles were determined to be high. Treatment with thiols caused etching of the particles after 24 h; however larger plasmonic particles showed greater resistance to thiol treatment. These water-soluble, bio-compatible nanoparticles are promising candidates for use in photoacoustic imaging, with even the smallest nanoparticles giving reliable photoacoustic signals.

Plasmonic metal nanostructures have shown great potential in sensing, photovoltaics, imaging and biomedicine, principally due to the enhancement of local electric field by light-excited surface plasmons, i.e., collective oscillation of conduction band electrons. Thin films of nanoporous gold have received a great deal of interest due to the unique 3-dimensional bicontinuous nanostructures with high specific surface area. However, in the form of semi-infinite thin films, nanoporous gold exhibits weak plasmonic extinction and little tunability in the plasmon resonance, because the pore size is much smaller than the wavelength of light. Here we show that by making nanoporous gold in the form of disks of sub-wavelength diameter and sub-100 nm thickness, these limitations can be overcome. Nanoporous gold disks not only possess large specific surface area but also high-density, internal plasmonic "hot-spots" with impressive electric field enhancement, which greatly promotes plasmon-matter interactions as evidenced by spectral shifts in the surface plasmon resonance. In addition, the plasmonic resonance of nanoporous gold disks can be easily tuned from 900 to 1850 nm by changing the disk diameter from 300 to 700 nm. Furthermore, nanoporous gold disks can be fabricated as either bound on a surface or as non-aggregating colloidal suspension with high stability.

A new carboxylic acid-terminated alkanethiol having bidentate character, 16-(3,5-bis(mercaptomethyl)phenoxy)hexadecanoic acid (BMPHA), was designed as an absorbate and protectant to form thermally stable carboxylic acid-terminated organic thin films on flat gold and nanoparticles, respectively. The structural features of the organic thin films derived from BMPHA were characterized by ellipsometry, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), and polarization modulation infrared reflection absorption spectroscopy (PM-IRRAS), and compared to those derived from mercaptohexadecanoic acid (MHA) and 16-(4-(mercaptomethyl)phenoxy)hexadecanoic acid (MMPHA). This study demonstrates that films derived from BMPHA are less densely packed than films derived from MHA and MMPHA. However, the results of solution-phase thermal desorption tests revealed that the carboxylic acid-terminated films generated from BMPHA exhibit an enhanced thermal stability compared to those generated from MHA and MMPHA. Furthermore, as a nanoparticle protectant, BMPHA can be used to stabilize large gold nanoparticles (~45 nm diameter) in solution, and BMPHA-protected gold nanoparticles exhibited a high thermal stability in solution thermolysis studies.