The effect of polyol on multiple ligand capped silver alloyed nanobimetallic particles in tri-n-octylphosphine oxide and oleic acid matrices

Joseph Adeyemi Adekoya, Enock Olugbenga Dare, Kehinde Olurotimi Ogunniran, Tolutope Oluwasegun Siyanbola, Olayinka Oyewale Ajani, Cyril Osereme Ehi-Eromosele and Neerish Revaprasadu

Abstract

The syntheses of Ag/M (M is Co, Ni, Pd, Pt and Ru) alloyed nanobimetallic particles in tri-n-octylphosphine oxide and oleic acid matrices were successfully carried out by the successive reduction of ligand capped metal ions with polyols, which resulted in rapid precipitation of some fractal high index faceted hybrid Ag/M bimetal nanoparticles. The optical measurements revealed the existence of modified surface plasmon band and peak broadening resulting from reaction-limited growth processes of the metal sols, making it possible to monitor the changes spectrometrically. The bimetallic nanoparticles were further characterized by powder x-ray diffraction, x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy and electron microscopy techniques which confirmed the formation of novel core–shell and alloyed clusters. The Ag/M nanoparticles thus synthesized within TOPO/OA matrices indicated significant reduction potential as a result of their energy band gap 2.65–2.77 eV which points to the fact that they could serve as reducing agents for electrocatalytic reaction