Synthesis of polyacrylonitrile/Ag core–shell nanowire by an improved electroless plating method

A simple synthetic route for fabricating continuous Ag shell on electrospun polyacrylonitrile (PAN) nanofibers has been presented via an improved electroless plating method. To avoid the complex steps (wet surface activation, pre-treatment) of the electroless plating methods reported before, UV photoreduction is used to fabricate dense Ag nanoparticles on the outer surfaces of PAN nanofibers. These Ag nanoparticles act as seeds in the following metal electroless plating step for the growth of continuous Ag shell. Additionally, our method can be easily applied to synthesize other metallic shell on the outer surfaces of PAN nanofibers with Ag nanoparticles as seeds.