In this work we present an electrochemical method to successfully prepare silver nanoparticles using only polyethylene glycol as stabilizer and without any other reactive. Here we study the use of the polymeric stabilizer to allow the introduction of a potential tool to reinforce the control of the size and shape of the nanoparticles throughout the synthesis process. The evolution of the reactions was followed by UV-Vis spectroscopy. The electrode processes were characterized by cyclic voltammetric measurements and the final product was studied by Atomic Force Microscopy, Transmission Electron Microscopy, and X-Ray Diffraction. The influences of the current density, polymer length, and concentration media were analyzed. 1. Introduction Noble metal nanoparticles have been intensely investigated due to their amazing properties such as optical, catalytic, and electric ones that can be controlled depending on the particles size, the size distribution, and shape [1]. Metallic silver particles in particular are technologically important because they show unique properties normally related to noble metals (excellent conductivity [2], chemical stability, nonlinear optical behavior [3, 4], etc.) besides other specific ones (catalytic activity [5], antibacterial action [6]). These characteristics make them suitable for a variety of potential applications on several devices [7–9]. Several methods have been reported for Ag nanoparticles synthesis, including Ag ions chemical reduction in aqueous solutions with or without stabilizing agents [10–13], thermal decomposition in organic solvents [14, 15], biochemical reduction [16, 17], chemical and photo reduction in reverse micelles [18–20], “nanosphere lithography” (NSL) [21], electrochemical reduction [22–27], irradiation reduction [28], microwave assisted [29–31] and chemical reduction in nonaqueous solvents with surface modifiers [32, 33]. Each method has typical advantages and disadvantages. Particularly, the electrochemical techniques are quite interesting because they allow obtaining particles with a high purity using fast and simple procedures and controlling the particle size easily by adjusting the current density [22, 23]. Through these techniques particles have been obtained with determined size and shape [24, 25] of several compositions [26, 27, 34–36]. Also, this method is eco-friendly because it avoids the use of reducer agents that usually are toxic. Different stabilizers have been used in electrochemical techniques, which include organic monomers as electrostatic stabilizers [26] and polymeric compounds
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