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Silver nitrate on alumina beads is gray instead of bright

I want to coat alumina beads with silver. For this purpose I have used silver nitrate solution. The problem is the grayish color of coated beads after reducing silver nitrate by sucrose solution. The spheres do not have a shiny silver color. Is there any trick to get rid of this grayish color?

Nargoya Foroz
Student - BT, Germany
August 31, 2011

Two things that might affect it are the micro roughness of the silica bead and something causing the silver to oxidize.

Do some homework on the process that they used to use on mirrors. I think that it also involved formaldehyde which is sort of nasty, so follow instructions very well.

James Watts
- Navarre, Florida
September 2, 2011

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