Abstract
Current nanogold cluster synthesized by chemical routine with 11 or 55 atoms of gold has been widely used for immuno chemistry probe as a form of nanocluster conjugated with biomolecules. It would be an undeveloped region that the 1 nm size of nanogold could be made by materials engineering processing. Therefore, objective of this study is to minimize the size of gold nanocluster as a function of operating temperature and chamber pressure in inert gas condensation (IGC) processing. Evaporation temperature was controlled by input current from 50 A to 65 A. Chamber pressure was controlled by argon gas with a range of 0.05 to 2 torr. The gold nanocluster by IGC was evaluated by X-ray diffraction (XRD) and transmission electron microscopy (TEM). The gold nanocluster for TEM analysis was directly sampled with special in-situ method during the processing. Atomic force microscopy (AFM) was used to observe 3-D nanogold layer surfaces on a slide glass for the following biomolecule conjugation step. The size of gold nanoclusters had a close relationship with the processing condition such as evaporation temperature and chamber pressure. The approximately 1 nm size of nanogold was obtained at the processing condition for 1 torr at $1124 ^{\circ}C$.