Abstract
Metal colloidal particles are widely used as building blocks for novel materials with photonic applications. In this article, we demonstrate the synthesis of silver particles with a wide range of sizes (up to 1200 nm in radius) by reducing silver nitrate with ascorbic acid in aqueous solutions in the presence of a polymeric steric stabilizer. The resulting particles were spherical aggregates with a rough surface and polydispersity below 20%. The particle morphology was examined by electron microscopy. Silver particles were directly coated with silica in a seeded growth Stöber process. Optical properties on a single-particle level were studied by means of extinction measurements and compared to scattering theory. At low ionic strength, the effective polydispersity of the charged silver particles was low enough to form a colloidal crystal.
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