In the early stage of the reaction, a precipitation reaction
between Ag+ ions and Cl ions occurred, which generated AgCl particles
in ethylene glycol. Fig. 1a presents the representative scanning
electron microscopy (SEM) image of the AgCl particles from
aliquots of the mixture in the early stage of the reaction, showing
that these particles exhibit cubic shapes and sizes with edge length
of 1–2 lm. Elemental analysis of these particles by energy dispersive
X-ray spectroscopy (EDS) found both Ag and Cl (Supporting
Information, Fig. S1), and XRD patterns of these particles further
evidenced that the precipitates were AgCl (Fig. 1b) [21].