Ag Nanostructure Morphologies and Physicochemical Properties Dictated by the Polyols Used in the Synthesis

The mixing of ethylene glycol (EG) with diethylene glycol (DEG) has been studied to analyse the effect of viscosity rise of solvent on the Ag nanostructures and their morphologies. The rise of viscosity has been adjusted by increasing the molar ratio of DEG to EG under optimized conditions of temperature and capping agent-polyvinylpyrrolidone (PVP). It has been seen that increasing the proportion of DEG resulted increasing the viscosity of solution and thus decreased the diameter of nanowires. The production of quantum nanowires has further become possible during reaction. The synthesized material was characterized using UV-Visible spectroscopy, SEM, EDX, XRD, PL and DSC. Surface Plasmon resonance and luminescence was determined using UV-Vis spectroscopy and PL spectroscopy. The data showed that Ag nanowires have a strong absorption band at 356 nm and 401 nm which can be attributed to the transverse and longitudinal surface Plasmon resonance. The XRD results indicated that the prepared product is made of pure Ag with face centred cubic structure, and the DSC analysis demonstrated the presence of amorphous domain within metal nanostructures. Finally, temperature fluctuations have caused the formation of nanoparticle of different shapes and sizes which bears the synthetic mechanistic insights. The study supplies new evidence to illustrate the actual growth mechanism and kinetics of silver nanowires. The main objective of this work is to investigate the effect of solvent in polyol synthesis of silver nanowires (Ag NWs), on the nanostructures diameter and morphologies.