from the conferences organized by TANGER Ltd.
In this work, the development of the novel route of synthesis of metal nanoparticles in aqueous systems (reffered to as matrixless nanoparticles) is presented. Nanoparticles are generated in the process of electro-dissolution of metal electrodes in deionized water without any additives apart from dissolved atmospheric carbon dioxide which acts as a source of counterions for generated metal cations. With this approach we were able to obtain silver, copper and gold nanoparticles of a high stability (reaching several years in the case of AgNPs). The synthesis conditions such as duration (from several hours to days) and applied potential were strongly dependent on the chosen metal. Other factors crucial for the synthesis efficiency were: lower temperature ca. 10 – 15 °C due to higher CO2 solubility and presence of the atmospheric molecular oxygen facilitating the initialization of the electrochemical dissolution of metal electrodes. Characterization of obtained samples was conducted with the use of Transmission Electron Spectroscopy, Single Particle Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass Spectrometry and Dynamic Light Scattering method.
Keywords: Metal nanoparticles, electrosynthesis, zeta potential, nanoparticle size© This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.