Chloride ion addition for controlling shapes and properties of silver nanorods capped by polyvinyl alcohol synthesized by polyol method

We report our investigation on the effect of chloride ions oncontrolling the shapes and properties of silver nanorods(AgNRs) synthesized using a polyol method. In this study, we used polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) as a capping agent and sodium chloride (NaCl) as asalt precursor and performed at the oilbath temperature of 140 °C. The chloride ions originating from the NaCl serve to control the growth of the silver nanorods. Furthermore, the synthesized silver nanorodswere characterized using UV-VIS, XRD, SEM and TEM. The results showed that besides being able to control the growth of AgCl atoms, the chloride ions were also able to control the growth of multi-twinned-particles into the single crystalline silver nanorods by micrometer-length. At an appropriate concentration of NaCl, the diameter of silver nanorodsdecreased significantly compared to that of without chloride ion addition. This technique may be useful since a particular diameter of silver nanorods affects a particular application in the future.