Rapid and Green Synthesis of Monodisperse Silver Nanoparticles Using Mulberry Leaf Extract

A simple, rapid and eco-friendly technique for the preparation of small-sized silver nanoparticles with narrow distribution from 5 nm to 15 nm was developed. Using silver nitrate as silver precursor, and mulberry leaves extract as both capping and reducing agent, silver nanoparticles were obtained at room temperature, without employing any other reducing and capping agents. The formation of silver nanoparticles was observed by the change of color from pale yellow to brown and the UV-vis absorption spectroscopy. The effects of reaction time, temperature, silver nitrate concentration and mulberry leaves extract amount were studied. The silver nanoparticles were characterized by transmission electron microscopy (TEM), UV-visible spectroscopy (UV-vis), X-ray diffraction (XRD) and Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR). The results demonstrate that the obtained metallic nanoparticles are highly crystalline silver nanoparticles with a spherical shape and capped with extract. A possible formation mechanism was proposed. The method in this paper may be extended to synthesize other noble metal nanoparticles using renewable materials as capping and reducing agents.