Enhancing Interfacial Charge Transport in Gold Nanoparticle@Polyaniline Hybrids via <i>N</i> ‐Heterocyclic Carbene Linkers
N-Heterocyclic carbenes (NHCs) have emerged as a unique class of ligands for gold nanoparticles (Au NPs), combining strong metal binding with intrinsic electronic conductivity. Yet over the past decade, studies on Au NP@NHC systems have primarily focused on their stability, while the conductivity of NHCs has remained largely unexplored due to synthesis challenges. Here, we present a synthetic strategy that addresses this gap by employing amino-functionalized NHC-Au complexes with in situ oxidative polymerization of polyaniline (PANI) to yield electronically coupled Au NP@NHC-PANI hybrids in aqueous media. This strategy enables both a controlled PANI shell growth and introduction of an electronically active NHC interlayer. Single-particle scattering spectroscopy reveals that NHCs improve the interfacial electronic coupling as evidenced by pronounced plasmonic linewidth broadening. Conductivity measurements further confirm that NHCs enhance charge transport: conductive atomic force microscopy (C-AFM) shows an increase in contact current from 14.6 to 99.4 pA under a 300-mV bias, while lateral four-probe conductance increases from 0.17 to 3.5 nS. These results provide the first direct experimental evidence of the conductive role of NHCs in hybrid NP-polymer systems, establishing a new interface-engineering strategy for the rational design of electronically delocalized nanostructures and their applications in nanoelectronics.
Authors
- Franziska Lissel (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0254-4565)
- Ziwei Zhou (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8156-3988)
- Stephan Link (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4781-930X)
- Ningwei Sun (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0003-4720-7498)
- Kaline P. Furlan (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4032-2795)
- Dmitry A. Ryndyk (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2591-8382)
- Christian Roßner (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3428-3542)
- Christy F. Landes (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4163-6497)
- Yana Vaynzof (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0783-0707)
- Zhenyang Jia (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7795-7180)
- Marina Sebastian
- Tathagata Chatterjee
- Antoine E. Jimenez
- Olga Guskova
- Shivam Singh
- Yanfei Gao
- Haoran Zhang
- Andreas Fery
- Po Yuen Ho
- Ilka Hermes
Institutions
- University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (US)
- Universität Hamburg (DE)
- Leibniz Institute for Solid State and Materials Research (DE)
- Leibniz Institute of Polymer Research (DE)
- Technische Universität Dresden (DE)
- Hamburg University of Technology (DE)
- University of Chemistry and Technology, Prague (CZ)
Publication Details
- Journal
- Angewandte Chemie International Edition
- Published
- 2026-05-11
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1002/anie.202526136
- Primary Topic
- Conducting polymers and applications
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 0.00
Funders
- National Science Foundation
- Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft