Probing interfacial interactions using core-satellite plasmon rulers.

Understanding molecular interactions at the interfaces of nanoparticles is fundamentally important because they determine the stability, affinity, functionality, and assembly of nanoparticles. However, probing the governing intermolecular forces at the interfaces, particularly for the nanoparticles dispersed in solution, remains challenging. Here, we demonstrate that the interfacial interactions between citrate-capped gold nanoparticles and various molecular functional groups can be probed using a plasmon ruler, based on a well-defined core-satellite nanoassembly structure. Different nature of the interactions causes a subtle change in the interparticle distance, and the change is sensitively measured as a shift in the plasmon coupling band of the core-satellite nanoassemblies. Molecular interactions including covalent bonding, hydrogen bonding, electrostatic interactions, and van der Waals interactions are explored.