Solvation Behavior of Gold Nanorods in Water: A Monte Carlo Simulation Study

Gold nanoparticles have become common in many applications of biotechnology due to their specific properties. Shape and size are important attributes which affect their solubility in water. In this study, the outcomes of Monte Carlo Simulation for the solvation of gold nanorods in aqueous solution with the different radii, in terms of solvation free energy, are discussed. Simulation results show a negative solvation free energy for all the samples with radii of 4 to 9Å. The results show that the absolute values of solvation free energy for gold nanorods with smaller radius are larger, which indicate the dependency between the gold nanorods solvation and their radius.