In-Situ TEM Observation of Silver Nanodendritic Growth in Liquid

Silver nanocrystals with highly branched morphologies are an appealing new series of nanomaterials owing to their unique structures, physicochemical properties, and exceptional potential as catalysts, optics, photography, microelectronics, bactericidal coatings, sensing materials, and building blocks for nanoscale devices. The properties related to their twin structure of the seed particles and the ratios between growth rates of different crystallographic facets of silver dendritic nanostructure. However, there is still a lack of information that how silver dendritic nanostructure growth by based particles aggregation and heterogeneous seed process remain unclear. Therefore, tracking particle growth by in-situ liquid cell transmission electron microscopy (LC-TEM) provides the direct evidence and extends the study of both dendritic nanostructure evolution and growth mechanisms. In this work, we observed the dynamic growth process of silver nanodendritic in solution by liquid cells with high resolution analysis. The following chemical equations describe the formation of Ag0 under electron beam radiation. H2O → eaq - + H•+ OH•+ H2O2 + H2 (1) Ag2+ + 2 eaq - → Ag (2) Ag2+ + 2 H• → Ag (3) The driving force comes from the non-uniformities in local electron does, the radiolysis of water could induce a concentration gradient among the species, which was a particularly significant factor to affect the particles attachment in non-equilibrium conditions resulted in inhomogeneous growth. The accumulation of Ag+ was reduced by electrons resulted in heterogeneous seeded growth of Ag0. The growth mechanisms of silver nanodendritic and aggregation behaviors are systematically studied from the dynamic and kinetic viewpoints, strengthening the knowledge in branched morphologies growth. Without a doubt, the field of synthesis and application of silver nanodendritic will keep moving forward as better understanding of their growth mechanisms are achieved. Figure 1