Effect of AgNO3 addition rate on aspect ratio of CuCl2–mediated synthesized silver nanowires using response surface methodology

Nanomaterials have size-dependant properties which are important in their field of application. In this study response surface methodology (RSM) was successfully used to consider the effects of AgNO3 addition rate and Cl− concentration on the aspect ratio of silver nanowires synthesized via polyol method; the most commonly applied method for synthesizing metallic nanoparticles. Moreover, a suitable model for the relationship between the factors (AgNO3 addition rate and Cl− concentration) and the response (aspect ratio) was statistically developed. Based on the statistical analysis, it was shown that the first order of these two factors have the same significance on the aspect ratio of silver nanowires; while, the second order term of AgNO3 addition rate has a much higher effect on the response compared to Cl− concentration. Furthermore, the interaction between these two factors was statistically significant. It was found that when the concentration of Cl− is lower than 1.05 mM, the aspect ratio of formed silver nanowires is remarkably low regardless of AgNO3 addition rate in the studied range. Moreover, by the use of proposed second order polynomial model, the optimum values of the factors were estimated for obtaining nanowires with fairly high aspect ratio (∼100).