Synthesis and characterization of nanocrystalline silver coating of fly ash cenosphere particles by electroless process.

Electroless nanocrystalline Ag coating of fly ash cenosphere particles utilizing a Sn-Pd catalyst system is demonstrated in this article. The deposition of pure metallic nanocrystalline Ag on the fly ash cenosphere particle surface is confirmed by scanning electron microscopy (SEM), energy dispersive spectroscopy (EDS), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), and X-ray diffraction (XRD) analysis. Under the described conditions of electroless coating, average nanocrystalline Ag-coating thickness is observed to be approximately 220 nm, using a focused ion beam technique, which is less than that observed by transmission electron microscopy (TEM) (260-360 nm). TEM observation further reveals that the Ag-coating is made up of 50 nm Ag nanocrystallites, which is comparable with the size of approximately 37 nm obtained from the XRD data. The mechanism of the electroless Ag-coating process is discussed. Ag-coated fly ash particles find applications in manufacturing conducting polymers for electromagnetic interference shielding applications.