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Royal Society of Chemistry, Faraday Discussions, (179), p. 59-77

DOI: 10.1039/c4fd00269e

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High-resolution insights into the early stages of silver nucleation and growth

Journal article published in 2015 by Cornelia M. Völkle, Denis Gebauer ORCID, Helmut Cölfen
This paper is made freely available by the publisher.
This paper is made freely available by the publisher.

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Abstract

Nucleation and growth of silver nanoparticles has already been investigated with various experimental and computational tools, however, owing to inherent problems associated with the analytical characterization of nucleation processes, there is a generic lack of experimental data regarding the earliest precursors and smallest Ag(0) clusters. Here, we address this problem by the application of Synthetic Boundary Crystallization Ultracentrifugation, utilizing a multiwavelength detector for the first time, complemented by a specialized Titration Assay. These techniques shed new light on silver nanoparticle precursors existing in the pre-nucleation regime and the initially nucleated ensemble of nanoclusters. For the first time, we present experimental data of UV-vis spectra for fractionated silver clusters. These allow for unsurpassed insights into the sequence of nucleation and early growth species as well as their UV/Vis spectra.