Stabilizing Gold Nanoparticles with Core-Shell Architectures

A scientific internship at AMOLF's Hybrid Nanosystems group investigating how coating gold nanoparticles (GNPs) with a protective shell (e.g., titania, TiO2) can improve their thermal stability. GNPs begin to reshape at temperatures around 200 °C, degrading their plasmonic performance; the core-shell nanoparticles are studied using single-particle spectroscopy, where spectral shifts measured before and after laser heating directly reveal morphological changes. Photothermal heating is achieved using a wavelength-tunable picosecond laser that excites each particle at its plasmon resonance. Depending on interests, the project may also include nanoparticle synthesis, electron microscopy correlation, or optical and thermal simulations.