Abstract:
Anisotropic gold nanoparticle (GNP), because of the presence of different surface energies that
arise from large fractions of edges, corners and vertices, has become increasingly important for
various applications in the field of chemistry, physics, biology and material sciences. The focus of
the present research work is mainly concerned with the use of anisotropic gold nanoparticles
(GNP) for ultrasensitive detection of toxic heavy metal ions and small biomolecules and
understanding the conformational changes of proteins while adsorbed onto the GNP surface to
prevent several misfolding diseases. It has further been extended to a novel synthetic approach for
ease drug loading and its delivery where the drug molecule directly loaded onto the synthesized
GNP without using multistep surface functionalization processes. We have shown that the specific
surface functionalization along with the anisotropic nature of GNP can enhance the sensing ability
dramatically compared to spherical GNP.
