Novel one pot synthesis of silver nanoparticle-polymer composites by supercritical CO2 polymerisation in the presence of a RAFT agent.

We report the one pot synthesis of a silver-polymer nanocomposite in supercritical carbon dioxide (scCO(2)) whereby an organometallic silver complex is thermally decomposed in the presence of a reversible addition fragmentation chain transfer (RAFT) agent during a polymerisation reaction in which the RAFT agent simultaneously stabilises the growing polymer microparticles and the formation of surface located silver nanoparticles.