A successful procedure for the in situ synthesis of silver nanoparticles by chemical reduction of a silver salt on
cotton and wool textiles is reported herein. The synthesis can be advantageously performed in an aqueous
system when compared with an ethanolic system. SEM studies confirmed the presence of silver nanoparticles
on the treated textiles, and elemental analysis by ICP revealed that, for the aqueous system, up to 3 and 4 mg
of silver per gram were deposited per gram of cotton and wool fabric, respectively. This represented an in-crease of up to 16-fold for cotton and 3-fold for wool compared with the ethanolic system. Thus, the differ-ence between the aqueous and ethanolic systems was more evident for cotton, albeit more silver was
deposited on wool samples in all conditions. An increase in the amount of reducing agent present resulted
in more silver being deposited on the textiles when using an aqueous system. The use of water presents a
great advantage for possible scale-up of the method. This simple method can be applied to produce textiles
for biomedical applications or presenting conductive properties