Silver metal nanosized particles: Control of particle size, self assemblies in 2D and 3D superlattices and optical properties

Water in oil droplets are used to control the size of silver metal nanoparticles. After synthesis, the silver metal particles are extracted from reverse micelles and redispersed in a non polar solvent. By increasing the size of the water droplets the average size of silver nanoparticles increases from 2nm to 7nm with a rather high size distribution. To narrow the particle distribution a size selected precipitation method is used. By deposition of a dilute solution containing the coated particles on a carbon grid, the particles arrange themselves in a monolayer organized in a hexagonal network. At high particle concentration, the particles are organized in multilayers forming microcrystals arranged in a face centered cubic structure. The optical properties of the silver nanoparticles isolated in micellar solution or self-assembled in 2D or 3D supperlattices are reported.