Abstract

Recently, a new class of well-characterized gold-cluster/alkanethiol materials has been synthesized. The materials consist of metallic cluster cores, whose diameter can be as small as 1.4 DID, surrounded by a self-assembled monolayer of thiols bound to the surface.^1,2 These materials are stable in solid form and are soluble in various solvents. The solutions show no evidence of aggregation or precipitation of the metallic cores. These cluster compounds³ have been well characterized. Synthetic techniques allow the reproducible production of specific, narrowly dispersed distributions of cluster sizes. Here we report the linear and nonlinear optical properties of these compounds.

© 1998 Optical Society of America