Production of a high dispersion of silver nanoparticles on surface-functionalized multi-walled carbon nanotubes using an electrostatic technique

Abstract

Multi-walled carbon nanotube/silver nanoparticles hybrid materials were easily synthesized by a mixing method of acid-oxidized nanotubes and the colloidal dispersion of silver nanoparticles. The silver colloidal dispersion was pre-synthesized by a chemical reduction of silver nitrate by dimethyl sulfoxide in the presence of trisodium citrate dihydrate as capping agents. In the mixing method, approx 5.0 nm diameters of silver nanoparticles with face-centered cubic crystal structures are highly dispersed on the acid-oxidized nanotubes due to the surface reactivity resulting from the enhancement of oxygen-containing functional groups. The results emphasize that the anchoring effect of the functionalized nanotube surface on silver nanoparticles originates from electrostatic metal-support interactions.