An investigation of the thermal decomposition of silver acetate as a precursor for nano-sized Ag-catalyst

• Preparation of Ag NPs via the thermal decomposition of silver acetate, confirmed by XRD and TEM examination.
• The single phase of the prepared Ag NPs has been confirmed by XRD at 250–600 °C.
• H2O2 decomposition over Ag NPs was found to decrease with the calcination temperature increase.

In this paper, we report a facile method for the preparation of Ag nanoparticles (NPs) via the thermal decomposition of its acetate precursor. The thermal behavior encountered throughout the calcination course of parent silver acetate was studied under air and nitrogen atmospheres. It was observed that silver acetate decomposes in a single step to silver metal with little amounts of Ag2O and carbon containing species. Based on the behavior indicated by thermogravimetric (TGA) and differential thermal analysis (DTA) curves, the precursor was calcined for 1 h in air at 150–600 °C. The caclined samples were characterized by XRD, FE-SEM, TEM and XPS techniques. It was observed that silver metal is the only constituent for the samples calcined at 250–600 °C. TEM indicates that the particles size of the Ag nano-crystals was in the range of 10–35 nm. The catalytic activities of the prepared nano-crystalline Ag catalysts were tested with respect to H2O2 decomposition at 35–50 °C.