A microwave-assisted polyol method for the deposition of silver nanoparticles on silica spheres

This paper describes a new method for coating ceramic bodies with silver nanoparticles. Microwave dielectric heating was used for this purpose. Silver nanoparticles with an average size of ∼20 nm were coated on the silica surface by first opening the siloxane bonds into silanols. In the second stage, the metallic nanoparticles were deposited using a polyol reaction. A plausible mechanism for the role of the microwaves in the silver deposition on the silica spheres is proposed.