Low Dimensional Silver Nanostructures and Its Composites: Synthesis, Growth Mechanism, Properties and Applications

Abstract

Metal nanoparticles have recently attracted extensive research interest because of the importance of these materials' specific properties such as optical, electronic, magnetic, mechanical, chemical and catalytic properties. These nanoparticles have been widely exploited for uses in photonics, electronics, optoelectronics, catalysis, information storage, photography, imaging, sensing, and biological labelling. It is demonstrated that their significant properties and potential applications depend on the composition, size, shape and structure of metal nanoparticles. The low-dimensional (LD) silver nanostructures (also termed as nano-sphere, nanowires, prisms or disks) and silver composites materials (Ag-Au, Ag-Pt, Ag-Pd alloys and Ag/Au@SiO2 ¬composites) become more and more attractive because such morphology possesses an extreme degree of anisotropy together with tips, or corners and edges for generating maximum electromagnetic-field enhancement that is useful for optical sensing, electronic and biological labelling applications. This thesis will focus on the methods for synthesizing, characterizing and application of silver nanoparticles with shape & size control and potential application, including five main parts. First, the literature review regarding to the silver nanoparticles and its composites are presented, in which the synthesis methods, growth mechanisms, and potential applications are briefly introduced. The second to fifth part will emphasize on my research work on silver nanoparticles and its composites, including silver nanoparticles and their deposited film(s) on substrates, silver nanowires generated via polyol-thermal method in autoclaves and their growth mechanisms, room-temperature synthesis of silver nanoplates (triangles, discs) using two or more reducing agents synergistically in aqueous solution, silver micro-nano-struture and its alloys (Ag-Au, Ag-Pt and Ag-Pd alloys) with photo and chemical catalysis application, and silver/gold @ SiO2 ¬composite materials. Finally, the conclusion and future work is presented.