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The facile synthesis of dense NSH on NGPs facilitates the fabrication of NG@Ag CSCPs with low silver content and high performances.

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In this work, we have demonstrated a method for controllable thiolated functionalization coupled with electroless silver plating to achieve aluminum@silver (Al@Ag) core-shell composite particles with thin and compact layers. First, Al microspheres were functionalized by a well-known polymerizable silane coupling agent, i.e., 3-mercaptopropyltrimethoxysilane (MPTMS). Decreasing the ethanol-to-water volume ratio (F) in silane solution produces modification films with high content of thiol groups on Al microspheres, owing to the dehydration of silane molecules with hydroxyl groups on Al microspheres and self-polymerization of silane molecules. Then, ethanol was used as one of the solvents to play a major role in the uniform dispersion of silane coupling agent in the solution, resulting in uniformly distributing and covalently attaching thiol groups on Al microspheres. In electroless silver plating, thiol groups being densely grafted on the surface of Al microspheres favor the heterogeneous nucleation of Ag, since the thiol group can firmly bind with Ag(+) and enable the in situ reduction by the reducing reagent. In this manner, dense Ag nuclei tend to produce thin and compact silver shells on the Al microspheres surfaces. The as-obtained Al@Ag core-shell composite particles show a resistivity as low as (8.58 ± 0.07) × 10(-5) Ω·cm even when the Ag content is as low as 15.46 wt %. Therefore, the as-obtained Al@Ag core-shell composite particles have advantages of low weight, low silver content and high conductivity, which could make it a promising candidate for application in conductive and electromagnetic shielding composite materials.

We have developed a novel seed-mediated growth method to fabricate nickel-coated graphite composite particles (GP@Ni-CPs) with controllable shell morphology by simply adjusting the concentration of sodium hydroxide ([NaOH]). The fabrication of two kinds of typical GP@Ni-CPs includes adsorption of Ni via electrostatic attraction, sufficient heterogeneous nucleation of Ni atoms by an in situ reduction, and shell-controlled growth by regulating the kinetics of electroless Ni plating in turn. High [NaOH] results in fast kinetics of electroless plating, which causes heterogeneous nuclei to grow isotropically. After fast and uniform growth of Ni nuclei, GP@Ni-CPs with dense shells can be achieved. The first typical GP@Ni-CPs exhibit denser shells, smaller diameters and higher conductivities than the available commercial ones, indicating their important applications in the conducting of polymer-matrix composites. On the other hand, low [NaOH] favors slow kinetics. Thus, the reduction rate of Ni slows down to a relatively low level so that electroless plating is dominated thermodynamically instead of kinetically, leading to an anisotropic crystalline growth of nuclei and finally to the formation of GP@Ni-CPs with nanoneedle-like shells. The second typical samples can effectively catalyze the reduction of p-nitrophenol into p-aminophenol with NaBH in comparison with commercial GP@Ni-CPs and RANEY Ni, owing to the strong charge accumulation effect of needle-like Ni shells. This work proposes a model system for fundamental investigations and has important applications in the fields of electronic interconnection and catalysis.