Highly stable and biocompatible dendrimer-encapsulated gold nanoparticle catalysts for the reduction of 4-nitrophenol

The development of stable and biocompatible gold nanoparticles has been drawing great interest. Dendrimers could be used as templates to entrap gold nanoparticles. Herein, dendrimer templates were prepared by the modification of generation 5 polyamidoamine (G5 PAMAM) dendrimers with maleic anhydride and cysteamine. Then modified dendrimer-encapsulated gold nanoparticles (Au-G5MC NPs) were formed by incubation of the templates with chloroauric acid and reduction with sodium borohydride. The resulting Au-G5MC NPs showed high stability, biocompatibility, and catalytic efficiency in water, which is ascribed to the single zwitterionic layer composed of amine and carboxyl groups. The single zwitterionic layer was shown to provide the Au-G5MC NPs with excellent stability in both phosphate-buffered saline and fibrinogen solutions. The mixed solution of Au-G5MC NPs with fibrinogen remained stable within 24 h, while the mixed solution of G5 PAMAM dendrimer-entrapped gold nanoparticles (Au-G5 NPs) with fibrinogen formed obvious aggregates immediately. Au-G5MC NPs displayed little cytotoxicity (>90% cell viability) against HeLa cells up to 100 μg mL−1, while Au-G5 NPs showed obvious cytotoxicity (60% cell viability). In addition, Au-G5MC NPs displayed high catalytic efficiency for the reduction reaction of 4-nitrophenol (4-NP) in water. This method can be used to prepare a variety of highly stable, biocompatible, and efficient dendrimer-encapsulated catalysts.