Gold nanoparticles in microelectronics advancements and biomedical applications

Gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) possess unique size-dependent optical, electronic, and chemical properties, making them auspicious and tunable nanoscale building blocks for microelectronics applications. This paper reviews recent advances in integrating AuNPs into miniaturized electronic components and devices to enhance performance and enable new functionalities. The tunable plasmonic behavior, electrical conductivity, and biocompatibility of AuNPs facilitate their integration into electronic circuits, printed electronics, optoelectronics, plasmonic, and biosensing devices. Functionalizing AuNPs with specific ligands permits selective biochemical interactions for biosensing. Controlled synthesis and assembly techniques allow AuNPs to be tailored and positioned precisely within microelectronic architectures. AuNPs synthesized with well-defined size and shape distributions and deposited on substrates using lithography, self-assembly, and layer-by-layer techniques act as versatile nanoscale components for fabricating miniaturized transistors, memory devices, photodetectors, plasmonic devices, and sensors. Ongoing review addresses reproducibility, stability, and scalability challenges to fully exploit their potential in microelectronics. Overall, this review highlights recent progress in harnessing the exceptional functional properties of AuNPs for innovating the next generation of microelectronic devices and biomedical applications.