Abstract

Nanomaterials have supported important technological advances due to their unique properties and their applicability in various fields, such as biomedicine, catalysis, environment, energy, and electronics. This has triggered a tremendous increase in their demand. In turn, materials scientists have sought facile methods to produce nanomaterials of desired features, i.e., morphology, composition, colloidal stability, and surface chemistry, as these determine the targeted application. The advent of photoprocesses has enabled the easy, fast, scalable, and cost- and energy-effective production of metallic nanoparticles of controlled properties without the use of harmful reagents or sophisticated equipment. Herein, we overview the synthesis of gold and silver nanoparticles via photochemical routes. We extensively discuss the effect of varying the experimental parameters, such as the pH, exposure time, and source of irradiation, the use or not of reductants and surfactants, reagents’ nature and concentration, on the outcomes of these noble nanoparticles, namely, their size, shape, and colloidal stability. The hypothetical mechanisms that govern these green processes are discussed whenever available. Finally, we mention their applications and insights for future developments.

Highlights

  • Nanoparticles (NPs) have unique chemical and physical properties compared to their bulk counterpart due to their high surface area and outstanding electronic, optical, magnetic, and catalytic properties, to name a few [1,2,3,4]

  • This review provides the readership an overview of the principal studies portraying the photochemical synthesis of Au NPs and Ag NPs using ultraviolet and visible light in addition to hypothetical mechanistic aspects, specific applications, and future developments

  • This band disappeared over the following days and was replaced by a broad surface plasmon resonance (SPR) band with a maximum absorbance greater than 500 nm, which indicated the formation of Au nanostructures

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Summary

Introduction

Nanoparticles (NPs) have unique chemical and physical properties compared to their bulk counterpart due to their high surface area and outstanding electronic, optical, magnetic, and catalytic properties, to name a few [1,2,3,4]. In addition to being easy and simple to implement, the photoinduced method is, in many ways, a green process that relies on biological extracts [44], biomolecules [45,46], and restricted use of chemicals [47] as the reducing agent and/or the stabilizer rather than harmful substrates It diminishes or eliminates the generation of waste and hazardous by-products [42,48,49]. Silver NPs (Ag NPs) and gold NPs (Au NPs) have been extensively studied [65] They have size- and shape-dependent properties that enable their application in numerous biological and biomedical areas [66,67,68,69], such as biosensing [70], drug delivery [71,72], medical imaging [65], and pharmaceutics [73]. This review provides the readership an overview of the principal studies portraying the photochemical synthesis of Au NPs and Ag NPs using ultraviolet and visible light in addition to hypothetical mechanistic aspects, specific applications, and future developments

Photochemical Processes
Synthesis of Gold and Silver Nanoparticles under UV Light Irradiation
Influence of pH
Influence of Precursor Concentration
Greener Alternatives
Influence of Reducing Agents
Bimetallic Silver–Gold Nanoparticles
Synthesis of Gold and Silver Nanoparticles under Visible Light Irradiation
Synthesis of Au NPs
Synthesis of Ag NPs
Impact of Experimental Parameters
Applications of Photochemically Produced Ag NPs and Au NPs
Findings
Conclusions and Future Developments
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