Tag Archives: electroplating (manufacutring) plant

Chinese scientists strike gold in plant tissues

I have heard of phytomining in soil remediation efforts (reclaiming nanoscale metals in plants near mining operations; you can find a more detailed definition here at Wiktionary) but, in this case, scientists have discovered plant tissues with nanoscale gold in an area which has no known deposits of gold. From a June 14, 2018 news item on Nanowwerk (Note: A link has been removed),

Plants containing the element gold are already widely known. The flowering perennial plant alfafa, for example, has been cultivated by scientists to contain pure gold in its plant tissue. Now researchers from the Sun Yat-sen University in China have identified and investigated the characteristics of gold nanoparticles in two plant species growing in their natural environments.

The study, led by Xiaoen Luo, is published in Environmental Chemistry Letters (“Discovery of nano-sized gold particles in natural plant tissues”) and has implications for the way gold nanoparticles are produced and absorbed from the environment.

A June 14, 2018 Springer Publications press release, which originated the news item, delves further and proposes a solution to the mystery,

Xiaoen Luo and her colleagues investigated the perennial shrub B. nivea and the annual or biennial weed Erigeron Canadensis. The researchers collected and prepared samples of both plants so that they could be examined using the specialist analytical tool called field-emission transmission electron microscope (TEM).

Gold-bearing nanoparticles – tiny gold particles fused with another element such as oxygen or copper – were found in both types of plant. In E. Canadensis these particles were around 20-50 nm in diameter and had an irregular form. The gold-bearing particles in B. nivea were circular, elliptical or bone-rod shaped with smooth edges and were 5-15 nm.

“The abundance of gold in the crust is very low and there was no metal deposit in the sampling area so we speculate that the source of these gold nanoparticles is a nearby electroplating plant that uses gold in its operations, “ explains Jianjin Cao who is a co-author of the study.

Most of the characteristics of the nanoparticles matched those of artificial particles rather than naturally occurring nanoparticles, which would support this theory. The researchers believe that the gold-bearing particles were absorbed through the pores of the plants directly, indicating that gold could be accumulated from the soil, water or air.

“Discovering gold-bearing nanoparticles in natural plant tissues is of great significance and allows new possibilities to clean up areas contaminated with nanoparticles, and also to enrich gold nanoparticles using plants,” says Xiaoen Luo.

The researchers plan to further study the migration mechanism, storage locations and growth patterns of gold nanoparticles in plants and also verify the absorbing capacity of different plants for gold nanoparticles in polluted areas.

For anyone who’d like to find out more about electroplating, there’s this January 25, 2018 article by Anne Marie Helmenstine for ThoughtCo.

Here’s a link to and a citation for the paper,

Discovery of nano-sized gold particles in natural plant tissues by Xiaoen Luo (Luo, X.) and Jianjin Cao (Cao, J.). Environ Chem Lett (2018) pp 1–8 https://doi.org/10.1007/s10311-018-0749-0 First published online 14 June 2018

This paper appears to be open access.