Influence of surfactant on the patterning behavior of nanosilver within polyacrylamide nanogels

Functional patterning and alignment of metallic nanoparticles are gaining enormous interest in electronics, photonics and sensing areas. In the present work, we have investigated the water-in-oil emulsion polymerization for the growth of functional silver nanoparticles within polyacrylamide chains. These functional nanoparticles undergo different alignment and patterning with the variation of surfactant concentration. As the surfactant in the emulsion increases, the resultant nanoparticles are linearly aligned into nanofiber with some branching. However, at 10% concentration of surfactant, these fibers are fused and quasi-circular pattern was observed. The average size of the nanoparticles was observed to be in the range of 5 to 25 nm. Whereas, the size of line pattern was observed in some microns with branching or interconnectivity of nanometer range.