Paper Citing NAMD - Abstract
Chan, Henry; Kral, Petr
Self-standing nanoparticle membranes and capsules
NANOSCALE, 3:1881-1886, 2011
We perform coarse-grained molecular dynamics simulations of self-standing nanoparticle membranes observed in recent experiments (K. E. Mueggenburg et al., Nat. Mater., 2007, 6, 656). In order to make our simulations feasible, we model 2-3 times smaller gold nanoparticles (core radius of r(core) approximate to 0.8 nm) covered with alkanethiol ligands (length of l(ligand) approximate to 0.5-2.6 nm). We study the structure, stability, and mechanical properties of these membranes and show that these characteristics are controlled by the ratio of R(LC) = l(ligand)/r(core). For R(LC) approximate to 0.6, the ligated nanoparticles form well ordered monolayers with hexagonal packing, in agreement with the experiments (R(LC) approximate to 0.44). For R(LC) approximate to 1.6, the nanoparticles form less organized multilayers, which are more stable and flexible. We show that these membranes could potentially form stable capsules for molecular storage and delivery.
