Insight into the fabrication and perspective of dendritic Ag nanostructures

This article reviews recent advances in the shape-controlled synthesis routes of hierarchical Ag dendritic nanostructures. Various fabricated techniques, with or without templates or surfactants, electrochemical method and sonochemical, microwave or photochemical assisted synthesis method, can be amazingly effective in the dendritic Ag nanostructures synthesis, if synthetic parameters are carefully selected. The involved synthesis mechanism are discussed in order to control the limited factors along the fabricated progress efficiently and then to find new synthetic means. Also, the blemish of the above synthesis routes that hinders the practical application is pointed out to inspire the future research.