Abstract
Silver nanoparticles are extensively used due to their chemical and physical properties and promising applications in areas such as medicine and electronics. Controlled synthesis of silver nanoparticles remains a major challenge due to the difficulty in producing long-term stable particles of the same size and shape in aqueous solution. To address this problem, we examine three strategies to stabilise aqueous solutions of 15 nm citrate-reduced silver nanoparticles using organic polymeric capping, bimetallic core-shell and bimetallic alloying. Our results show that these strategies drastically improve nanoparticle stability by distinct mechanisms. Additionally, we report a new role of polymer functionalisation in preventing further uncontrolled nanoparticle growth. For bimetallic nanoparticles, we attribute the presence of a higher valence metal on the surface of the nanoparticle as one of the key factors for improving their long-term stability. Stable silver-based nanoparticles, free of organic solvents, will have great potential for accelerating further environmental and nanotoxicity studies.PACS: 81.07.-b; 81.16.Be; 82.70.Dd.