A C-MEMS based electroosmotic microreactor for anisotropic AuNPs synthesis: Proof of concept

Abstract

Anisotropic gold nanoparticle synthesis has aroused great attention in the scientific community in the last two decades. These nanomaterials have unique properties that make them suitable for a wide range of applications in the biomedical field such as optical sensing, biomedicine, chemical catalysis, etc. Therefore, there have been several efforts in the seek of novel and green synthetic methodologies for gold nanoparticles. The control of the concentration of reactants and the kinetics of the reaction are two crucial parameters for the developing of a good synthetic procedure. Microfluidics offers different approaches to deal with the materials synthesis at a microscale with a higher synthetic control at a molecular level. A proof of concept for the synthesis of anisotropic gold nanoparticles was carried on a C-MEMS based electroosmotic microreactor. This microfluidic design was used previously specifically as a bidirectional electroosmotic flow micropump. The velocity profile produced by this microfluidic device was employed to mix the reaction components for the chemical synthesis of anisotropic gold nanoparticles. The reactor was studied with an experimental design and computational modelling. Finally, the anisotropic gold nanoparticles were characterized by UV-Vis and TEM microscopy.