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The citrate reduction method of synthesis of gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) as introduced by Frens has been standardized to enable one to prepare AuNPs of desired dimension by controlling the composition of the reactants. The standardization has been made through characterization of the nanoparticles by UV-vis spectroscopy and from the transmission electron microscopic (TEM) measurements. Linearity of the plot of the plasmon absorption maximum (lambda(max)) of the synthesized AuNPs against their diameter as measured from TEM, as well as the plot of lambda(max) with the fractional concentration of citrate in the reaction mixture provides a convenient and easy route to dictate the size of the synthesized AuNPs from a control on the composition of the reactants. The standardization reveals that a calculated composition of citrate (in terms of fractional concentration) in the reaction mixture produces AuNPs of a desired dimension within the range of 15-60 nm. The diameter of the synthesized gold nanoparticles can be confirmed simply from the UV-vis spectrophotometric technique. This essentially makes the use of costly TEM unnecessary, at least for the primary purposes.
Ghosh et al. (Sat,) studied this question.