Nonstoichiometric Polyelectrolyte Complexes: Smart Nanoreactors for Alloy and Multimetallic Catalyst

Abstract

Abstract-This work efforts to demonstrates synthesis and potential employment of bimetallic alloy and multimetallic coexisting mixture of metal nanoparticles (NPs) using spherical nonstoichiometric polyelectrolyte complexes (PECs) in aqueous solution, whereas PECs act both as a template to implant metal precursors and nanoreactor for diverse architecture of metal NPs. Alloy-type metal NP-embedded PECs were synthesized by drop wise mixing of two types of oppositely-charged weak PEs preloaded with metal precursors followed by coreduction process. Furthermore, individual metal NPs (e.g. Au, Ag, or Pd) stabilized by PEs were mixed into a different volume ratio and results in bi-or tri-metallic NP-embedded PECs structure where each NPs exist as separate entities rather than alloy or core-shell structure. Catalytic activities of the synthesized materials were tested for reduction of 4-nitrophenol to useable 4-aminophenol.Moreover, they exhibit promising performances for surface enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) activities.Index Terms-Alloy, nanoreactor, nonstoichiometric polyelectrolyte complexes, synergistic effect.

Engineering Peptide-Based Polyelectrolyte Complexes with Increased Hydrophobicity

“…Complex coacervates have extremely low interfacial tension with water [ 7 , 8 ] which has led to encapsulation applications in the food industry [ 9 , 10 ] as well as potential applications in the pharmaceutical industry [ 11 , 12 , 13 , 14 ]. Moreover, coacervates are being explored as potential vehicles for gene delivery [ 15 , 16 , 17 ], as adhesives [ 18 , 19 ], as bio/nanoreactors [ 20 , 21 ] and as a mechanism for the formation of membraneless organelles [ 22 ]. The dominant driving force for coacervation has been determined to be an increase in entropy from counterion release that occurs when two oppositely charged macroions come together [ 23 ].…”