Synthesis and characterization of Ag@polycarbazole nanoparticles using different oxidants and their dispersion behavior

Ag nanoparticles (NPs) encapsulated by polycarbazole (PCz) have been synthesized using ion adsorption method. The PCz synthesis around Ag NPs has been performed by adsorbing Ag⁺¹ and Fe⁺³ oxidants onto Ag NPs, which initiated surface polymerization and thus, Ag NPs@PCz nanocomposite has been synthesized. The morphology of pure NPs and composite NPs was characterized by TEM which also elucidated the effect of oxidant on the core NPs, beside their morphologies and phase contrasts of metal NPs and polymer. The polymer around the surface of core NPs was characterized by FT-IR which proved that PCz was the organic phase of the composite NPs. UV-Vis spectroscopy has been employed to study surface plasmon resonance (SPR) of pure NPs and composite of NP which demonstrated that SPR of core NPs remained preserved after coating with the polymer. Furthermore, Zeta Sizer Nano series has been applied to analyze the dispersion behavior of pure NPs and composite NPs which displayed the greatly improved dispersion behavior of the composite NPs as compared to pure Ag NPs. Therefore, our study proved helpful to analyze the suitability of metal oxidants for PCz based nanocomposite synthesis and determination of their optical and dispersion behavior.