How Do Silver Ions Interfere With Particle Images?
The short answer is that in order for the TEM to photograph particles, all water in the solution must be evaporated. When that happens, any silver ions in the solution form a silver oxide compound. Because the number of silver oxide particles is far greater than the number of silver colloid particles, it is the particles of silver oxide which predominate in TEM images. So, what is represented as images of colloidal silver particles are really silver oxide particles . . . and they are not the same thing at all. (See The Truth About Ionic Silver for more details.) Further, the particles depicted in the TEM images do not represent particles in the actual solution, but are actually created in the process of removing the water for the TEM imagery, further invalidating the image. The long answer goes like this: Samples for TEM observation are placed in a high vacuum chamber causing any water present in the sample to evaporate. Silver ions in a solution cannot exist without water, so when the
