**Conflict of interest**

The authors declare that they have no competing interests or conflicts.

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**Author details**

provided the original work is properly cited.

Samuel A. Briggs1,2\* and Khalid Hattar1

2 Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR, USA

1 Sandia National Laboratories, Albuquerque, NM, USA

\*Address all correspondence to: samuel.briggs@oregonstate.edu

*Evolution of Gold Nanoparticles in Radiation Environments*

*DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.80366*

© 2018 The Author(s). Licensee IntechOpen. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium,

*Evolution of Gold Nanoparticles in Radiation Environments DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.80366*

*Gold Nanoparticles - Reaching New Heights*

lines of those presented in **Figure 6** [59].

**8. Conclusion**

**Acknowledgements**

or the US Government.

**Conflict of interest**

applications utilizing the rapid degradation or the satellite morphology in the irradiated embedded nanoparticles seen in **Figure 8** [23, 61]. If not, the field may explore the response of other types of nanoparticles and nanostructured materials for inclusion in the next generation of devices that must withstand complex radiation environments. To be able to understand the effects of enhanced sputtering, systematic and thorough experimental and modeling efforts are needed along the

Predicting the response of nanostructured materials for radiation environments is a new and rapidly developing field that is still poorly understood. The exposure to a range of ionizing photon irradiation has already found application in medical radiation therapies and will continue to gain traction in the coming years. In contrast, much less has been done to study neutron and charged particle irradiation effects on gold nanoparticles. The initial studies that have been done to study the radiation response of gold nanoparticles to charged particle irradiation indicate that a significant enhancement of sputtering yield is present. This enhanced sputtering leads to the rapid disintegration of the original nanoparticle and the formation of unique satellite nanoscale arrangements. Further modeling and experimental efforts are needed prior to the trusted incorporation of gold nanoparticles into other radiation environments (medical, space, or nuclear) being considered.

The authors would like to thank Prof. Jonathan Hinks for his insightful discussion and Ms. Macy Vereb for her assistance with the manuscript. This work was performed, in part, at the Center for Integrated Nanotechnologies, an Office of Science User Facility operated for the US Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science. Sandia National Laboratories is a multi-mission laboratory managed and operated by the National Technology and Engineering Solutions of Sandia, LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Honeywell International, Inc., for the US DOE's National Nuclear Security Administration under contract DE-NA-0003525. The views expressed in the article do not necessarily represent the views of the US DOE

The authors declare that they have no competing interests or conflicts.

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