Investigation into conductivity of silver-coated cenosphere composites prepared by a modified electroless process

Silver-coated cenosphere composites are successfully fabricated by a modified electroless plating process that is modified by replacing the conventional pretreatment and sensitization steps by only using surface hydroxylation step to simplify the steps and reduce the overall cost of the coating process. Furthermore, the activation and electroless plating steps are merged into one step. The cenosphere particles are characterized by scanning electron microscope (SEM), energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDX) and X-ray diffraction analysis (XRD) before and after the coating process. The relatively continuous and compact coating is obtained under the given coating conditions. The results indicated that the conductivity of Ag-coated cenospheres was improved with increasing the AgNO3 solution dosage and reaction time. It was also found that the optimum AgNO3 solution concentration was 0.05 mol/L, and the optimum range of reaction temperature was from 50 °C to 65 °C.