Preparation of microsized silver crystals with different morphologies by a wet-chemical method

Abstract

A wet-chemical method was presented for preparation of spherical, flowerlike, hexagonal, and triangular microsized silver crystals. Well-defined particles were prepared by mixing of iron(II) sulfate heptahydrate solution with silver nitrate solution at the presence of different modifiers with high-speed stirring at 8–20°C. It is found that the diameters of resulting products are 0.6–6.0 μm and the morphologies of the silver microcrystals are greatly affected by the introduced modifiers. It is concluded that the microsized silver crystals with different morphologies can be synthesized by introducing appropriate modifiers at appropriate experimental parameters. Scanning electron microscopy and X-ray diffraction were used to characterize the resulting products.