Ag-Coated PAN Nanofibers Prepared by Poly(dopamine)-Assisted Electroless Plating

Abstract

Silver-coated PAN nanofibers have been prepared by a facile method that combined the electrospinning technique and electroless plating method. Dopamine was used to functionalize the surface of electrospun PAN nanofibers to form the chemisorption sites in order to assist electroless plating of silver. SEM and ATR-FITR results indicated that poly(dopamine) has been successfully deposited on the surface of PAN nanofibers. XRD and SEM results also showed that face-centred cubic (fcc) crystal Ag nanoparticles with uniform size were well coated on the surface of electrospun PAN fibers.