To determine the size, size distribution and morphology of the
Ag-nanoparticles, TEM measurements were performed. Fig. 3
shows the TEM images of silver nanoparticles depending on
Ag:copolymer ratios. It is clear that silver nanoparticles are monodisperse
and spherical. The calculated sizes of silver nanoparticles
depending on different silver:copolymer ratios are tabulated in
Table 2. The sizes of nanosilver particles are almost the same in
experimental limits with 20 nm averaged size for all ratios which
complement the spectrophotometric results. By combining the
spectrophotometric and TEM measurements, it is obvious that
nanoparticle size is independent of the Ag:copolymer ratio, but increase
in the precursor amount probably affects the number of
nanoparticles in the cores instead particle size.