Computational model for the production of monodisperse silver spheres in solution

We report the results of computational modeling of the production of monodisperse, spherical silver particles through the rapid mixing of reducing agent and silver-amine complex solutions, in the absence of a protective colloid. We find that the process can be modeled effectively by a two-stage reaction mechanism used previously to model the production of gold particles [1]. Here, we treat both the equilibrium concentration of silver atoms and the surface tension of silver particles as free parameters in our simulation, finding that the reaction time scale is fit by a narrow region of this parameter space. As in the previous work on gold particles, a kinetic `dimer suppression factor' is required to limit the number of final particles produced. In addition, we consider an extension of the two-stage reaction model which incorporates the effect of the silver-amine complexation reaction on the availability of Ag monomers. [1] J. Park, V. Privman, and E. Matijevic, \textit{J. Phys. Chem. B} \textbf{105}, 11630 (2001).