Preparation of ultrafine silver powder using glycerol as reducing agent

บทคัดย่อ

The production of silver nanoparticles and sub-micron particles can be achieved by silver alkoxide from silver sulfate and subsequently reducing with glycerol. To reduce the particle size of silver sulfate precursors, ball milling was employed to reduce particle sizes down to 0.81 microns. However, silver sulfate without grinding provided smaller particle sizes of silver particles as opposed to ground specimens. Stirring silver alkoxide simultaneously was efficient to provide for uniform distribution of silver powder. The silver powder thus produced had brain-like shape consisted of very fine aggregate silver particles. The yield of silver powder was in the range of 95-99 %. Silver powder had fcc crystal structure by X-ray diffraction (XRD). The average particle size and powder cluster sizes were in the range of 60 to 250 nanometers and from 6 to 30 microns, respectively. The surface areas were approximately 1.1-2.9 m²/g and apparent densities were from 0.6 to 1.2 g/cm³