Shape controlled synthesis of gold nanoparticles and their efficacy in yield of fluorescence in Fluorescein dye molecule

A BSTRACT Conformational variation in the intrinsic chemical structure of the polymer poly(N-vinyl-2-pyrrolidone) (PVP) when dissolved in different solvents changes its reducing/capping ability to a large extent. This altered reducing/capping facilitates the synthesis of diverse anisotropic size/shaped gold nanoparticles with unique physico-chemical properties. Sincere efforts were undertaken in correlating the nanogold optical plasmonic signatures with the corresponding TEM measurements. XRD measurements quantify not only the phase purity of the as-synthesized Au nanoparticles but also explain the shape evolution of gold nanoparticles. On interaction with the conventional dye molecules in solution, our gold nanostructures effortlessly tailor the emission behavior of dye through the well-known fluorescence resonance energy transfer (FRET), thereby corroborating the fluorescence quenching/enhancement of the dye molecules with reference to the size/shape of the host gold nanoparticles, yielding ultra sensitive optical sensing/imaging. Herein, we systematically illustrate the FRET phenomena of the fluorescein dye molecules adsorbed on different gold nanoparticle morphologies, the results which could be extended similarly to various other relevant dye molecules as well with ease