Preparation of Silver Nanoparticles Stabilized by Two Different Thermoresponsive Poly(N-isopropylacrylamide)-g-Poly(ethylene oxide) Copolymers

Abstract

With a similar composition but different monomer sequence distributions in the copolymer backbones, two poly(N-isopropylacrylamide)-g-poly(ethylene oxide) (PNIPAM-g-PEO) copolymers were synthesized at different temperatures of 29 and 45 °C, in the presence of which Ag nanoparticles (NPs) were successfully prepared by in situ reduction at 25 and 41 °C, respectively. The experimental results show that both the copolymers can effectively stabilize Ag NPs, and the copolymer PNIPAM-g-PEO/45 has a better stabilizing and dispersing effect when the preparation temperature of Ag NPs is 25 °C.