Monodisperse silver microspheres: A facile BSA template method

The spherical silver mirco/nano-particles with narrow size distributions were obtained by chemical reduction of silver ammonia solution with ascorbic acid as reducing agent and bovine serum albumin (BSA) as bio-template. The effects of the concentration of Ag⁺ ions, BSA and ammonia, reactive temperature on the silver morphology and particle sizes were investigated. SEM, TEM and XRD were employed to characterize the morphology and structures of the prepared silver mirco/nano-particles. The results show that the spherical silver particle with smooth surface and narrow size distributions can be obtained by controlling the concentration of Ag⁺ ions, BSA, reaction temperature, etc. By controlling the above parameters, the silver spherical mirco/nano-particles with particle sizes ranging from 0.2 to 2.3 μm can be well prepared, which is expected to be used in manufacturing high performance electronic pastes.