Synthesis of metallic nanoparticles by electrical discharge in the liquid medium

abstract

English

Nanoparticles synthesis and their application for many different purposes belong to hottest topics of the current research. Commercially offered nanoparticles prepared by various technologies suffer from agglomeration in time although they are kept in stabilizing solutions and therefore they are unsuitable for the long-term storage. These colloid solutions also partially limit application fields. Thus new ways for nanoparticles synthesis as well as nanoparticles surface treatment are under high interest. The presented research deals with development of a new method for in-situ synthesis of silver and copper nanoparticles by electric discharge generated in the liquid phase. Nanoparticles are prepared by bottom-up process from silver nitrate or copper sulphate solutions of different concentrations by plasma treatment in a specially designed glass container. Glass container is divided to anode and cathode part by Teflon diaphragm with small orifice connecting both electrode parts. Newly constructed electrode systems for solution treatment are used where one of them is straight with argon gas feed and second one is L-shape curved without gas influx. Unlike other approaches where only the liquid surface is treated by gaseous flowing plasma (typically RF argon jet), we used plasma discharge generated directly in the inorganic salt solution at normal conditions (room temperature and atmospheric pressure). The nanoparticles were synthesized much more efficiently in the cathode zone and they have nearly spherical shape with size below 100 nm. Remarkably, the nanoparticles are prepared without use of any stabilization agent and free of agglomeration during the storage. Nanoparticles prepared under various operational conditions were characterized by ultraviolet-visible spectroscopy (UV-Vis) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM). Future research will be focused on nanoparticle properties and quantity improvement. Prepared particles will be consequently used for further research of their antibacterial activity on various substrates.

metallic nanoparticles, discharge in the liquid

HORÁK, J.; NIKIFOROV, A.; LEYS, CH.; CHAN, K.V.; KRČMA, F.

17. 9. 2017

Thesaloniki

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