Facile Synthesis and Characterization of Monodisperse Silver Colloidal Nanoparticles Stabilized by Sodium Laurate

A facile process was present in this paper for synthesizing nano silver particles colloidal in aqueous solutions using silver nitrate, sodium laurate, and hydrazine hydrate as silver precursor, stabilizer, and reducing agents, respectively. The generation of nano silver particles was confirmed by change of color from milk white to brown or dark. The prepared silver nanoparticles were analyzed by scanning electron microscope (SEM), transmission electron microscope (TEM), UV-Visible spectroscopy (UV-Vis), X-ray diffraction (XRD), and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopic (FT-IR). The SEM and TEM images indicated that the prepared silver nanoparticles have spherical shape, average size of 6 nm, and with a narrow distribution from 2 to 8 nm. The XRD information exhibited that the obtained metallic nanoparticles were highly crystalline in nature. FT-IR data demonstrated that the sodium laurate absorbed on the surface of silver nanoparticles. The effects of the sodium laurate and hydrazine hydrate on the silver nanoparticle formation were studied. The mechanism of the formation silver nanoparticles was discussed. The process raised in this study can be considered as an excellent candidate for the preparation of silver nanoparticles in a large-scale production. The simple method can be extended to synthesis of other noble metal nanoparticles.