Gold Nanoparticle Quantitation by Whole Cell Tomography

Many proposed biomedical applications for engineered gold nanoparticles require their incorporation by mammalian cells in specific numbers and locations. Here, the number of gold nanoparticles inside of individual mammalian stem cells was characterized using fast focused ion beam–scanning electron microscopy based tomography. Enhanced optical microscopy was used to provide a multiscale map of the <i>in vitro</i> sample, which allows cells of interest to be identified within their local environment. Cells were then serially sectioned using a gallium ion beam and imaged using a scanning electron beam. To confirm the accuracy of single cross sections, nanoparticles in similar cross sections were imaged using transmission electron microscopy and scanning helium ion microscopy. Complete tomographic series were then used to count the nanoparticles inside of each cell and measure their spatial distribution. We investigated the influence of slice thickness on counting single particles and clusters as well as nanoparticle packing within clusters. For 60 nm citrate stabilized particles, the nanoparticle cluster packing volume is 2.15 ± 0.20 times the volume of the bare gold nanoparticles

Potential Modulated Intercalation of Alkali Cations into Metal Hexacyanoferrate Coated Electrodes

Nickel hexacyanoferrate is a polynuclear inorganic ion intercalation material that loads (intercalates) and elutes (deintercalates) alkali cations from its structure when electrochemically reduced and oxidized, respectively. Nickel hexacyanoferrrate (NiHCF) is known to preferentially intercalate cesium over all other alkali cations, thus providing a basis for a separation scheme that can tackle DOE's radiocesium contamination problem. This program studied fundamental issues in alkalization intercalation and deintercalation in nickel hexacyanoferrate compounds, with the goal of (1) quantifying the ion exchange selectivity properties from cation mixtures, (2) enhancing ion exchange capacities, and (3) and understanding the electrochemically-switched ion exchange process (ESIX)

Stability and phase transfer of catalytically active platinum nanoparticle suspensions

In this work, we present a robust synthesis protocol for platinum nanoparticles that yields a monomodal dispersion of particles that are approximately 100 nm in diameter. We determine that these particles are actually agglomerates of much smaller particles, creating a “raspberry” morphology. We demonstrate that these agglomerates are stable at room temperature for at least 8 weeks by dynamic light scattering. Furthermore, we demonstrate consistent electrocatalytic activity for methanol oxidation. Finally, we quantitatively explore the relationship between dispersion solvent and particle agglomeration; specifically, particles are found to agglomerate abruptly as solvent polarity decreases