Silver nanoparticles: from silver halide photography to plasmonics

This book provides systematic knowledge and ideas on nanoparticles of Ag and related materials. While Ag and metal nanoparticles are essential for plasmonics, silver halide (AgX) photography relies to a great extent on nanoparticles of Ag and AgX which have the same crystal structure and have been studied extensively for many years. This book has been written to combine the knowledge of nanoparticles of Ag and related materials in plasmonics and AgX photography in order to provide new ideas for metal nanoparticles in plasmonics. Chapters 1–3 of this book describe the structure and formation of nanoparticles of Ag and related materials. Systematic descriptions of the structure and preparation of Ag, Au, and noble-metal nanoparticles for plasmonics are followed by and related to those of nanoparticles of Ag and AgX in AgX photography. Knowledge of the structure and preparation of Ag and AgX nanoparticles in photography covers nanoparticles with widely varying sizes, shapes, and structures, and formation processes from nucleation to growth. The second half of this book (Chapters 4–7) describes the properties and performances of nanoparticles of Ag and related materials, covering light absorption and scattering, catalysis, light-induced charge separation, and stability. In this book, the knowledge of AgX photography which has been accumulated over many years is analysed to improve our understanding of the use of metal nanoparticles for plasmonics. The new ideas which have arisen from the interaction between these two fields are introduced and discussed.