Amino-acid-based, lipid-directed, in situ synthesis and fabrication of gold nanoparticles on silica: a metamaterial framework with pronounced catalytic activity.

We introduce a new example of the in situ preparation and fabrication of stable gold nanoparticles on silica in an aqueous medium, by using only lipid-grafted silica particles in HAuCl(4) solution without addition of any external reducing agent. The lipid-grafted silica particles have been synthesized by graft-to methodology and characterized by elemental analysis, thermogravimetric analysis and Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy. The metamaterial particles show high catalytic activity for the reduction of p-nitrophenol to p-aminophenol.