Investigation of thermally generated gold nanoparticles with AFM

Gold nanoparticles (Au NPs) were generated by thermally annealing gold thin films (5-30 nm) which were sputtered on glass substrates. The conditions of the thermal annealing (temperature and annealing time) were varied in order to generate nanoparticles in different sizes. The size and distribution of the nanoparticles were characterized by atomic force microscopy (AFM). The Au NP modified surface is intended to be used as sensor transducer element in a surface plasmon resonance imaging (SPRi) instrument. Thus we investigated the size of the generated NPs in function of the annealing parameters in order to reach optimal conditions for the NP signal amplification in the SPRi device.