Experimental study on effect of different parameters on size and shape of triangular silver nanoparticles prepared by a simple and rapid method in aqueous solution

Abstract

This paper continues our previous work on preparation of truncated triangular silver nanoparticles. The method proceeds with reaction of silver nitrate with hydrazine in the presence of sodium citrate in aqueous solution, in which triangular nanoparticles are formed in a few minutes with some spherical ones. In particular range of reactants, especially high reductant concentration, only spherical nanoparticles are formed. In further investigation we observed that spherical nanoparticles shape could change to triangular by aging. This means that controlled growth of nanoparticles could lead to the formation of triangular ones. Therefore, a method was devised to slow down the rate of reduction by adding Fe3+ to the reaction solution. The results show that in this case more triangular nanoparticles are formed compared to the original one. This result also confirms that with the increasing hydrazine concentration, growth becomes less important compared to nucleation and smaller triangles are formed.