Coating Corn Seeds with Silver Using DC Magnetron Plasma to Protect Them from Biological Effects

Abstract

The silver was sputtered as layers on corn seeds using a direct current plasma planar magnetron sputtering. Three samples of corn seeds coated with silver resulted from varying the sputtering times 1,2, and 3 min. AFM and XRD technique were used to study the surface morphology of Ag thin films and structure properties. Cultivation of corn grains treated with the three levels of sputtering individually 1, 2 and 3 minutes did not affect the germination percentage. The atomic absorption spectrophotometer’s findings showed that the amounts of silver in plant of the control treatment (without sputtering) did not differ significantly from the spraying treatment for the three levels, where it was 0.350 ppm and for sputtering treatment at levels 1,2,3 minutes and the gum Arabic treatment were 0.363, 0.368, 0.385, 0.382 ppm respectively.