Tuning the catalytic activity of silver nanoparticles
- The use of silver nanoparticles in consumer related products has significantly increased over the last decade, especially due to their antimicrobial properties. Today they are used in a variety of products, which range from textiles to dietary supplements. Thus, investigations on nanoscale silver become increasingly important in many fields like biomedicine or catalysis. Unfortunately, the results of these studies are extremely diverse and do not lead to a consistent evaluation of the toxicity of silver nanoparticles. The main problem is the use of nonuniform and poorly characterized particles with broad size distributions. To overcome this problem we modified the known polyol process to synthesize ultra-small core-shell silver nanoparticles in a large scale. The particles are highly stable and show no aggregation for more than six months. Small-angle X-ray scattering analysis reveals a narrow size distribution of the silver cores with a mean radius of 3 nm and a distribution width ofThe use of silver nanoparticles in consumer related products has significantly increased over the last decade, especially due to their antimicrobial properties. Today they are used in a variety of products, which range from textiles to dietary supplements. Thus, investigations on nanoscale silver become increasingly important in many fields like biomedicine or catalysis. Unfortunately, the results of these studies are extremely diverse and do not lead to a consistent evaluation of the toxicity of silver nanoparticles. The main problem is the use of nonuniform and poorly characterized particles with broad size distributions. To overcome this problem we modified the known polyol process to synthesize ultra-small core-shell silver nanoparticles in a large scale. The particles are highly stable and show no aggregation for more than six months. Small-angle X-ray scattering analysis reveals a narrow size distribution of the silver cores with a mean radius of 3 nm and a distribution width of 0.6 nm. Dynamic light scattering provides a hydrodynamic radius of 10.0 nm and a PDI of 0.09. The stabilizing ligand PAA can be easily exchanged by biomolecules to modify the surface functionality. Replacements of PAA with glutathione and bovine serum albumin have been successfully performed. To demonstrate the broad applicability of our particles we performed catalysis experiments with the reduction of 4-nitrophenol as model reaction. The PAA-stabilized particles show a catalytic activity of (436 ± 24) L g-1 s-1, which is the highest reported in literature for silver nanoparticles. In contrast, GSH and BSA passivate the surface substantially resulting in lower catalytic activities.…