Carbon Monolith Surface Chemistry Influence on the Silver Deposit Amount and Crystallite Size

The surface of carbon monolith (CM) was chemically treated in order to obtain antibacterial filters with silver deposit for water treatment. The chemical treatment involved submerging the as-received CM in HNO(3), KOH and H(2)O(2) solution. The specific surface area was examined by N(2) adsorption. Silver deposition at the surface of CM samples was performed using cheap and simple procedure of immersing CM samples in aqueous solution of AgNO(3). Temperature programmed desorption method has been used in order to investigate the nature and thermal stability of surface oxygen groups before and after silver deposition. The composition and crystalinity of silver deposits have been examined by X-ray diffraction. Chemical treatment does not cause any drastic changes of CM specific surface area, but increases a total amount of surface oxides. Amount of deposited silver is several times higher for all chemically treated samples. The results show that increasing the amount of CO yielding groups on CM surface leads to increased amount of Ag deposit and decreases its crystallite sizes