A Novel Green Synthesis Approach for Silver Nanoparticles Coated with Phototherapy Dye Molecules

Esthy Levy-Eitan Department of Chemistry, Institute of Nanotechnology, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat-Gan, Israel Elad Segal Department of Chemistry, Institute of Nanotechnology, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat-Gan, Israel Elianna Lichtenstein Department of Chemistry, Institute of Nanotechnology, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat-Gan, Israel Adi Salomon Department of Chemistry, Institute of Nanotechnology, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat-Gan, Israel

In this present study, different sizes silver nanoparticles (AgNPs) decorated by phototherapy molecules were synthesized in a one-step synthesis. We report on spherical silver nanoparticles with narrow size distributions in aqueous solution by the reduction of silver nitrate as metal precursor at room temperature in the presence of sodium borohydride as reducing agents. The morphologies and structures of the nanoparticles were characterized by transmission electron microscopy, UV-visible spectroscopy and X-ray diffraction. The results indicated that spherical silver nanoparticles were obtained with different average sizes of 10, 50 and 100nm. The surface plasmon resonance peak was found between 390 and 450nm.

The effect of pH on the size of silver nanoparticles was investigated. It was found that pH has a significant influence on size of the nanoparticles. At high pH, larger size of nanoparticles was obtained compared to low pH values. This phenomenon is completely opposite to the well-known in the literature, where increasing pH led to the reduced size of the synthesized silver nanoparticles.

The interaction between the silver nanoparticles plasmonic modes with the molecular excited state is studied as well for hybrid materials application.

TEM image of silver nanoparticles stabilized with TPPS

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