Monochromatic X-Ray Induced Novel Synthesis of Plasmonic Nanostructure for Photovoltaic Application

It has been universally delineated that the plasmonic metal nanoparticles can enhance the efficiency of photovoltaic cell by increasing the probability of energetic solar photons capturing phenomena using localized surface plasmonic resonance response. In this paper, we developed a novel in-situ simple approach to synthesize noble plasmonic silver nanoparticles (AgNP) from aqueous poly-vinyl-pyrrolidone solution of metal salt using radiolysis of water via synchrotron monochromatic X-ray irradiation without any chemical reducing agent. X-ray irradiation of water produces hydrated electrons (e(-)aq), superoxide (O(-)2) and atom radicals H*, which triggers the reaction and reduces metal salt. X-ray radiolysis based synthesis provides the control over the reaction and prevent the formation of secondary products as occurs in case of chemical reduction route. In the previous studies, synchrotron "white" X-rays had been examined for the synthesis of metal nanoparticles, but that technique limits only upto the material synthesis while in this work we explored the role of "monochromatic" X-rays for the production of bulk amount of nanoparticles which would also provide the feasibility of in-situ characterization. Transmission electron micrographs show that the synthesized AgNP appears spherical with diameter of 2-6 nm and is in agreement with the size estimation from uv-vis spectra by "Mie theory".