Different chemical methods have been used for the synthesis of metallic nanoparticle dispersions, the most common involving the use of an excess of ionic reducing agents. The synthesis of nanoparticles usually proceeds under reflux in the presence of reducing agents and protecting agents. We present work showing spontaneous reduction of AgNO3 in the presence of Poly(4-vinyl phenol), as a capping agent for preparation of silver spherical nanoparticles and triangular nanoplates.
Simple addition of aqueous solution of silver nitrate to solution of PVP leads to the reduction of silver ions to silver metal, as manifested by a gradual brownish to greenish coloration of the solution.
Structure information is obtained with electron diffraction and oriented particulate monolayer X-ray diffraction. Interestingly, the XRD data shows that there is only one peak centered at 38.05, which is from the (111) lattice plane of face-centered cubic (fcc) silver. This clearly demonstrates that the basal plane should be the (111) plane.
Using this non-ionic approach for the preparation of silver nanoparticles in our system, we demonstrate the usefulness of a non-ionic approach in building silver-embedded polymer film for the study of quantum dot-based memory devices.
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