Issue 7, 2018

Digestive ripening in the formation of monodisperse silver nanospheres

Abstract

Digestive ripening is a unique process in colloidal synthesis that can enable direct conversion of polydisperse nanoparticles into monodisperse ones. However, such a strategy usually relies on strongly coordinating ligands such as alkylthiols to initiate etching and stabilize the surfaces and thus affords nanoparticles with hydrophobic and passivated surfaces, which greatly limits their applications. In this work, we report that digestive ripening can be achieved by decoupling the etching and surface stabilization functions using two independent chemical agents, allowing the use of considerably weak capping ligands which are hydrophilic and can be replaced later according to the need of the specific applications. As a proof-of-concept, we, for the first time, demonstrate a novel digestive ripening system to synthesize hydrophilic monodisperse Ag nanospheres capped by conveniently removable ligands. With chloride for oxidative etching and diethylamine for effective surface capping, monodisperse Ag nanospheres have been conveniently obtained by starting with a precursor of either a Ag+ solution or a AgCl suspension. These monodisperse Ag nanospheres with a clean surface exhibit excellent activity in surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS). We believe that this new strategy may significantly broaden the general applicability of digestive ripening for the controlled synthesis of colloidal nanoparticles for a broad range of applications.

Graphical abstract: Digestive ripening in the formation of monodisperse silver nanospheres

Supplementary files

Article information

Article type
Research Article
Submitted
17 ⴱⵕⴰ 2018
Accepted
16 ⵉⴱⵔ 2018
First published
16 ⵉⴱⵔ 2018

Mater. Chem. Front., 2018,2, 1328-1333

Author version available

Digestive ripening in the formation of monodisperse silver nanospheres

S. Zhang, L. Zhang, K. Liu, M. Liu, Y. Yin and C. Gao, Mater. Chem. Front., 2018, 2, 1328 DOI: 10.1039/C8QM00077H

To request permission to reproduce material from this article, please go to the Copyright Clearance Center request page.

If you are an author contributing to an RSC publication, you do not need to request permission provided correct acknowledgement is given.

If you are the author of this article, you do not need to request permission to reproduce figures and diagrams provided correct acknowledgement is given. If you want to reproduce the whole article in a third-party publication (excluding your thesis/dissertation for which permission is not required) please go to the Copyright Clearance Center request page.

Read more about how to correctly acknowledge RSC content.

Social activity

Spotlight

Advertisements