VERIFICATION OF BEER - LAMBERT LAW USING SILVER

NANOPARTICLES
AIM
Preparation of silver nano particles using the chemical reduction method and verification of Beer-
Lamber Law.

APPARATUS AND CHEMICALS REQUIRED

Standard Flask, Beakers, Measuring Cylinder, weighing balance, glass-rod, silver nitrate, base
(DEA/TEA), reducing agent (aldehyde).

PRINCIPLE
The Beer-Lambert law is the linear relation between the absorbance and concentration of an
absorbing species. It relates to the absorption of light to the properties of the material through which
the light is travelling.

In practice, Beer’s law is accurate enough for a range of species solvents and concentrations, and it
is a widely used relationship in quantitative spectroscopy. Most often, it is used in a quantitative
way to determine concentrations of an absorbing species in solution.

Absorbance is measured in a spectrophotometer by passing a collimated beam of light at

wavelength l through a plane parallel slab of material that is normal to the beam. For liquids, the
sample is held in an optically flat, transparent container called a cuvette. Absorbance (A) is
calculated from the ratio of light intensity passing through the sample (I0) to the intensity that is
incident on the sample (I).

According to this law, when light passes through a material, there exists a linear dependence
between the absorbance (A) of light and the product of absorption coefficient (ε) with the path
length (l) of the light (distance through which light travels in the material).

Absorption coefficient of a material in turn depends on the molar absorptivity or molar extinction
coefficient or molar absorption coefficient (ε) and the concentration (c) of the absorbing species in
the material. Thus, according to Beer-Lambert law, absorbance is given by

Where, ε is constant, for a given wavelength of light, can be obtained from the absorbance values of
solutions with different concentrations. Absorbance is unit less, while the units of ε, l, c are L mol-1
cm-1, mol L-1 and cm-1, respectively. Appearance of yellow colour indicates the formation of
colloidal silver or silver nanoparticles. The recorded UV-Vis spectrum of the solution, shows the
absorbance at a lmax of ~420 nm, as shown in Fig.1.1. This feature is attributed to the Plasmon
resonance of silver nanoparticles. Fig.2 shows the plot of absorbance Vs concentration for the
silver nanoparticles of different dilutions. It can be observed that all the data points fit into a straight
line, thus conforming to the Beer-Lambert law. Slope of the above plot gives the absorption
coefficient of the silver nanoparticles. For the calculation of absorption coefficient, path length is
taken as equal to the width of the cuvette used for recording the UV-vis spectrum (we have taken it
as 1 cm). A standard graph is plotted with concentration of silver with absorbance and from the
slope the value of absorption coefficient is calculated.

PROCEDURE
Preparation of colloidal nanosilver involves dissolving 0.0157 grams of silver nitrate in 50 mL of
distilled water. 0.025 grams of startch/PVP/gum is added to the above silver nitrate solution under
stirring. A few drops of base (DEA/TEA) are added to the above mixture to form silver complex
followed by addition of mild reducing agents (aldehydes). The formed colloidal suspension is
made-up to 100 mL to form stock solution containing 100 ppm of silver nanoparticles.

SN Volume of Ag stock Volume of distilled Final concentration of Absorbance

solution water silver (ppm)
1 1 9 10
2 2 8 20
3 3 7 30
4 4 6 40
5 5 5 50
6 10 - 100

RESULT

1. The Beer - Lambert’s law is verified for the silver nanoparticles.

2. The molar extinction coefficient of silver nanoparticles (ε) = ________ L mol-1 cm-1.