Research Information System
Surfaces and Interfaces, vol.78, 2025 (SCI-Expanded, Scopus)
The synthesis of silver–silver phosphate heterostructures has recently attracted significant interest for developing highly efficient photocatalysts, as both components are photoactive: silver provides plasmonic properties, while silver phosphate exhibits semiconducting activity. This study investigates the synthesis of Ag-based structures on the surface of single-crystalline hydroxyapatite (HA), resulting in a hybrid nanosystem by loading Ag⁺ onto HA and subsequently photoreducing the ions into Ag nanoparticles. Here, it is demonstrated that by tuning the Ag ratio, the primary composition of the Ag-based structure can be controlled to yield silver phosphate and Ag nanoparticles with different sizes. The silver phosphate can be formed on the interface of the single-crystalline hydroxyapatite (HA) and the Ag nanoparticles, protecting HA’s surface and photoactivating the HA. The synthetic approach involves the addition of aqueous Ag+ to HA, resulting in the conversion of the outermost layer into silver phosphate on the surface. Then the unbound ions or loosely bound silver species start to reduce into Ag nanoparticles under photoirradiation. The size and distribution of the grown nanoparticles were controllable by tuning the ratio of Ag to HA. In this regard, a set of detailed microscopic imaging and diffraction pattern techniques, including transmission electron microscopy (TEM), high-resolution TEM (HRTEM), elemental mapping, and area diffraction, was used to reveal the deposition of Ag on the HA surface. Furthermore, X-ray diffraction (XRD) patterns' analysis demonstrates that Ag nanoparticle formation is not detrimental to the crystal structure of HA. This research presents the synthesis of a new core-shell-like heterostructure, where the silver species compose the shell and the HA composes the core of the heterostructure.