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 similar to 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.