During British Rule, our country was very popular with another name called Golden Bird due to the wealth and prosperity of the nation. Now back to the 21st century where we are no more Golden Bird but the new discovery and innovation of our Indian scientists took us back to our past. Recently, they have developed a new material called “Black Gold” by using nanoparticles of gold. According to the study, this new material can potentially be used for the applications used in seawater desertification and solar energy harvesting.
The scientists of Mumbai-based Tata Institute of Fundamental Research used the gold nanoparticles in the research. Here they have rearranged the size and gaps between these nanoparticles and developed a new material. The researchers said that it has unique properties such as the capacity to absorb light and carbon dioxide (CO2).
Whereas Gold doesn’t have such properties and made this black gold a new material. According to the findings published in Chemical Science journal, it was mentioned that due to its black coloured appearance, scientists have named it Black Gold.
“We have not doped gold nanoparticles with any other material or added other materials. We varied the inter-particle distance between gold nanoparticles using a cycle-by-cycle growth approach by optimising the nucleation-growth step, using dendritic fibrous nano silica, whose fibres were used as the deposition site for gold nanoparticles,” said Vivek Polshettiwar, leader of the research team, while speaking to India Science Wire.
One of the most fascinating properties of the new material is its ability to absorb the entire visible and near-infrared region of solar light. It does so because of inter-particle plasmonic coupling as well as heterogeneity in nanoparticle size. Black gold could also act as a catalyst and could convert carbon dioxide into methane at atmospheric pressure and temperature using solar energy.
“If we develop an artificial tree with leaves made out of black gold, it can perform artificial photosynthesis, capturing carbon dioxide and converting it into fuel and other useful chemicals,” added Prof Polshettiwar. Currently, the efficiency of conversion of carbon dioxide into fuel is low but our researchers believed that it could be improved in the coming years.
In order to get a clear understanding of the ability of Black Gold, researchers researchers dispersed it into water and exposed the solution to light for one hour and the temperature of the solution was measured. The temperature of the solution with pure silica spheres rose to 38 degrees while the ones with different concentrations of black gold rose to 67 to 88 degrees. The maximum increase in temperature was attributed creation of thermal hotspots due to the heterogeneity of the particle sizes as well as optimum inter- particle coupling.
Researchers also said that it can be used as a nano-heater to convert seawater into potable water with good efficiency
“Our results indicate the potential application of black gold in the purification of seawater to potable water via steam generation using solar energy under atmospheric reaction conditions,” according to the researchers.
The team members of this research were Mahak Dhiman, Ayan Maity, Anirban Das, Rajesh Belgamwar, Bhagyashree Chalke and Vivek Polshettiwar (TIFT); Yeonhee Lee, Kyunjong Sim and Jwa-Min Nam (Seoul National University). The study was funded by the Department of Science and Technology (DST) and the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE). (India Science Wire)
