Surface Restructuring of Nanoparticles:  An Efficient Route for Ligand−Metal Oxide Crosstalk

Surface modification of nanocrystalline metal oxide particles with enediol ligands was found to result in altered optical properties of nanoparticles. The surface modification results in a red shift of the semiconductor absorption compared to unmodified nanocrystallites. The optical shift is correlated to the dipole moment of the Ti−ligand complexes at the particle surface and decreases with the ligand size. The binding was found to be exclusively characteristic of colloids in the nanocrystalline domain(