Gold Innovations Blog

This article, reviewing the links between nanotechnology and art, reminded me of the great work Mike Ware has done in re-igniting interest in the chrysotype – the use of gold nanoparticles to form photographic images. Mike wrote an excellent paper for Gold Bulletin on this subject a couple of years ago:

Chrysotype: Photography in Nanoparticle Gold

The printing of photographs in pure gold, rather than the ubiquitous medium of silver, was first achieved in 1842 by Sir John Herschel, but his innovative ‘chrysotype’ process was soon consigned to obscurity, owing to its expense and uncertain chemistry. In the 1980s some modern coordination chemistry of gold was applied to overcome the inherent problems, enabling an economic, controllable gold-printing process of high quality, which offers unique benefits for specialised artistic and archival photographic purposes. The colour of the gold image depends on the dimensions of the nanoparticles, which are controlled by the parameters of the photochemical process.

Photograph derived from gold nanoparticles

 The chrysotype pictures have a unique quality in my opinion