Discussion |
Hypothesis Reflection
In this research, there is some evidence to support the hypothesis. The hypothesis being as the water concentration in the solvent increases it causes the nanoparticles to be larger on average. The evidence is that in the 2.5mL reline no nanoparticles were produced whereas there is evidence they were produced in the other solutions, so the nanoparticles formed larger aggregates in the solution with more water.
Analysis of Results
If nanoparticles were formed they were not spherical as the peaks on all of UV-Vis graphs, where there was a peak, the peaks were not sharp and had more of a curve to them. The results of the AFM indicate that the infact nanowires were formed in the reaction. The reason the other reline and water solutions were not tested using AFM was that the pictures produced by the atomic force microscopy for the pure reline formed a relatively large aggregate on its own. Indicating that the reline solution was not able to prevent the gold from forming aggregates. So testing the other reline and water solutions would not have been meaningful because they would have been more unstable so larger aggregates would have formed so the results would not have been usable.
Future
The failure to make more spherical nanostructures and reline’s inability to prevent aggregates from forming leads to the question of what would the results of the same experiment be with a different deep eutectic solvent in use instead of the reline. By finding the optimal deep eutectic solvent we would be able to analyze the nanoparticles more easily which would give a more definite answer.
Different halide salts and hydrogen that can be used to make deep eutectic solvents