Abstract:
Silver nanoparticles (Ag NPs) were prepared by using the reducing agent trisodium
citrate with the precursor AgNO3 and stabilized by ascorbic acid. The increase in
concentrations of AgNO3 significantly changes the color from light brown to dark
brown. This color change indicates the formation of silver nanoparticles. The re sulting AgNPs were characterized by UV-VIS and FTIR techniques. In this study,
the effects of concentrations of AgNO3 on the bandgap energy, absorption, reflection
and transmission of the silver nanoparticles were investigated. It was found that the
increasing concentration of silver nitrate resulted in an increasing absorption of silver
nanoparticles, but its absorption peak observed at the same wavelength, 416nm. The
optical direct band gap energy was decreased from 3.52eV to 3.36eV as silver nitrate
concentration increased from 0.1M to 0.6M. The optical direct band gap of silver
nanoparticles calculated by the tauc plot model, which indicates band gap of syn thesized silver nanoparticles more than bandgap energy of bulk silver. This higher
value of band gap might be due to a decrease overlapping of energy levels depend
on its small number of atoms. Finally, from the FTIR measurements, we have ob served that the transmission of infrared decreases as concentration increases. But
the molecular vibration of the AgNPs show the same functional group with the same
wave number. molecular vibration of the silver nanoparticles showed high coherency
at different concentrations.
Keywords: Silver nanoparticles, Chemical reduction method, UV-Vis absorption,
Molecular band of FTIR.