A Review of Silver Nanoparticles: Synthesis Methods, Properties and Applications

In recent years, nanoparticles of noble metals such as gold, silver and palladium have drawn immense attention due to the wide range of new applications in various fields of industry. Particularly, silver nanoparticles have significant interest in medical applications such as very effective antibacterial agents without the toxic effects, and industry application such as inkjet inks containing well uniform dispersions of nano-sized silver particles that are useful for producing electronic circuits. It is important that the silver nanoparticles require not only the particles to be of nano-size, but also synthesis of the nanoparticles to be produced easily and at low cost. Over the past few decades, many synthetic methods of silver nanoparticles have been studied. This paper aims to review different synthesis routes of silver nanoparticles and their applications. In particular, we mainly present several chemical approaches to preparing silver nanoparticles and their properties as well as applications based on our recent studies. The focus is on effective and efficient synthesis of pure colloidal silver nanoparticles with high electrical conductivity and their potential application.