Anisotropic growth of silver nanostructures from silver spheres by a simple chemical reduction route

•SPR peak is tuned by changing the precursor concentration.•The silver colloids prepared by Na-CMC are stable for 6 months.•Number of spheres, rods and triangular prisms are functions of Ag+ concentration.•Transformation from silver nanospheres to anisotropic nanostructures is demonstrated.

A well-designed two-step solution-based method has been proposed to switch isotropic silver nanospheres to anisotropic nanoprisms using sodium carboxy methyl cellulose as surfactant. This method has several clear advantages including simplicity and high stability. Silver prisms with a nanometer scale diameter could be judiciously prepared when the precursor concentration was slightly changed. The obtained samples have been characterized by X-ray diffraction, UV–Vis absorption spectroscopy, scanning electron microscopy, and transmission electron microscopy. The experiments show that the concentration of AgNO3, is an important factor for controlling the morphology of the products.