Self-Assembly of High Density of Triangular Silver Nanoplate Films Promoted by 3-Aminopropyltrimethoxysilane

Norhayati Bakar,Joe Shapter,Akrajas Umar,Muhamad Salleh

doi:10.3390/app5030209

Norhayati Bakar, Joe Shapter + Show 2 more

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https://doi.org/10.3390/app5030209

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Journal: Applied Sciences	Publication Date: Jul 30, 2015
Citations: 31	License type: CC BY 4.0

Affiliation: National University of Malaysia

Abstract

In this work, we studied the structure of synthesized triangular silver nanoplates in solution and the growth of the nanoplates on a silicon surface using 3-aminopropyltrimethoxysilane (APTMS) as a coupling agent. The triangular-shaped colloidal silver nanoplates were simply synthesized by a direct chemical reduction approach. We studied the three characteristic peaks of the unique optical absorbance of triangular silver nanoplates and subsequently measured an average edge length of 26 ± 1 nm. The nanoplate thickness was determined to be 7 ± 2 nm from transmission electron microscopy images. Depositing the nanoplates on a silicon surface was carried out to determine the coverage of triangular nanoplates obtained when adhesion was promoted by a coupling agent. The APTMS film assisted the attachment of the nanoplates to the silicon surface and the coverage of the nanoplates increased with increasing deposition time. The triangular silver nanoplate thin film was a monolayer and a high coverage (near complete) was obtained after eight hours of exposure to the nanoplate solution. The silver film formed was shown to be a good surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) substrate as it gave an enormous Raman enhancement for bisphenol A (BPA).

Highlights

IntroductionMuch effort from many research groups has examined the synthesis of silver colloidal solutions with suspensions of various shapes and sizes including silver nanospheres [4,5], nanowires [6,7], nanoplates [8,9], nanocubes [10], and nanorods [11]
Triangular silver nanoplates were successfully prepared by direct chemical reduction at room temperature as reported by Zhang [32]
Silver nanoplates with a triangular shape were successfully synthesized using direct chemical reduction

Summary

Introduction

Much effort from many research groups has examined the synthesis of silver colloidal solutions with suspensions of various shapes and sizes including silver nanospheres [4,5], nanowires [6,7], nanoplates [8,9], nanocubes [10], and nanorods [11]. Among these nanostructures, silver nanoplates have attracted considerable attention because they could potentially generate maximum electromagnetic field enhancement due to their highly anisotropic structure [12,13,14]. Understanding the growth of the silver thin films is crucial in the fabrication of devices including solar cells and light emitting diodes (LEDs) because the growth on solid surfaces is influenced by the specific size, shape, and distribution of the nanostructures being deposited [25,26]

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