Silver Nanoparticles Synthesized by Microwave Heating: A Kinetic and Mechanistic Re-Analysis and Re-Interpretation

Abstract

A quantitative kinetics and mechanistic re-analysis is performed of an important 2016 paper that described the formation of Agn nanoparticles from the polyol reduction of silver nitrate in the presence of poly(N-vinylpyrrolidone) under microwave heating. Elegantly and expertly obtained, in operando synchrotron high-energy X-ray diffraction (HEXRD) data, integrated with the microwave heating for the first time, were used to follow the Agn nanoparticle formation reaction in real time and to obtain time-resolved, HEXRD peak areas for the formation of both Ag(111) and Ag(200) facets. Unfortunately, the subsequent kinetics and mechanistic analysis that resulted is far from the state-of-the-art and was done without citing nor using well-established literature of nanoparticle nucleation and growth kinetics and mechanisms that has been available for over 20 years. Herein, the data are re-analyzed and re-interpreted in light of the fitting of the kinetics data with the presently most widely cited and employed, del...