This Thesis reports the synthesis, purification and characterisation of gold
nanoparticles (NPs) functionalised with a monolayer of hydrazone ligands in order to
perform post-synthetic manipulations of the NP-bound monolayer exploiting dynamic
covalent chemistry. NP post-synthetic manipulation based on reversible non-covalent
interactions between oligonucleotides represents a promising approach to achieve
functionalisation and self-assembly for potential applications in biology and medicine.
However, the stability of these nanosystems is ensured only in a narrow window of
environmental conditions. On the other hand, irreversible covalent strategies potentially
allow the full range of synthetic chemistry to be exploited but they provide poor control
over the manipulation of the NP-bound monolayer and can only produce kinetically
controlled amorphous NP aggregates. Dynamic covalent chemistry represents an
interesting and an attractive alternative approach because it would combine the
reversibility of non-covalent interactions with the stability of covalent bonds. By this
way, ligand-functionalised NPs could be manipulated in order to introduce a large
variety of molecular functionalities on the NP surface not only to subtly tune the NP
physicochemical properties but also to access an entire range of novel nanomaterials
