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Monday, 21st July 2008 (2300 views)

Researchers have found the grinding of a gold complex will change its luminescence behaviour, reports Chemical and Engineering News.

The change in colour from blue to yellow cannot be seen by visible light so the scientists in Japan used UV.

Chemists Hajime Ito, Masaya Sawamura and colleagues at Hokkaido University in Sapporo found the change can by reversed after exposing the ground gold powder to a solvent like dichloromethane.

"X-ray ... studies suggest that grinding transforms the more stable crystalline blue phase into an amorphous yellow phase and alters the coordination of the isocyanide ligands to the gold atoms," said the news site.

The researchers suggested that compound could be used in sensing and recording devices.

Last year, Chemical and Engineering News reported that Stanford University scientists had learnt new insights about how gold clusters form after solving the structure of a gold-thiolate nanocrystal.

They used X-ray crystallography to find that 79 gold atoms in a nanoparticle form the core of the particle and 23 gold atoms make up the outer shell.

 

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