When Like Destabilizes Like: Inverted Solvent Effects in Apolar Nanoparticle Dispersions (original) (raw)

We report on the colloidal stability of nanoparticles with alkanethiol shells in apolar solvents. Small angle X-ray scattering and molecular dynamics simulations were used to characterize the interaction between nanoparticles in linear alkane solvents ranging from hexane to hexadecane, including 4 nm gold cores with hexadecanethiol shells and 6 nm cadmium selenide cores with octadecanethiol shells. We find that the agglomeration is enthalpically driven and that, contrary to what one would expect from classical colloid theory, the temperature at which the particles agglomerate increases with increasing solvent chain length. We demon-1