Environmentally friendly synthesis of organic-soluble silver nanoparticles for printed electronics

In this study, we attempted to synthesize organic-soluble silver nanoparticles in the concentrated organic phase with an environmentally friendly method. The fully organic phase system contains silver acetate as a silver precursor, oleic acid as both a medium and a capping molecule, and tin acetate as a reducing agent. Monodisperse silver nanoparticles with average diameters of ca. 5 nm can be easily synthesized at large scale. Only a small usage of tin acetate (< 0.05 eq. mol) resulted in a high synthesis yield (> 90%). Also, it was investigated that the residual tin atom does not exist in the synthesized silver nanoparticles. This implied that tin acetate acts as a reducing catalyst.