Gold nanoparticles

Gold has fascinated mankind for millennia. This fascination is not simply the result of ancestral customs or social conventions. Scientific knowledge provides some explanation for this attraction. Gold is the best-known of the metals found in its native state, in the form of nuggets for example (along with silver, copper and platinum). The other metals, on the other hand, are mined in their oxidized form, and the corresponding reduction requires knowledge of metallurgy that dates back to the Bronze Age (around 2,000 BC) and has been perfected throughout human history. Gold is the only metal, along with copper, that is not grey. And because it is chemically stable (unalterable), it retains its properties indefinitely. That's why it's called a noble metal. It's easy to see why gold has always been the ideal metal for jewelry. Even today, of the 2,500 or 3,000 tonnes of gold mined every year –, to which must be added several hundred tonnes a year brought back onto the market in recent years – gold's main use remains in jewelry (2,400 tonnes), followed by electronics and electrical contacts (around 450 tonnes) and dentistry (70 tonnes). However, this age-old fascination with gold has been winning over scientists for the last twenty years, albeit for almost diametrically opposed reasons. This metal, so inert that chemists had no interest...