Silver oxide Silver oxide Silver(I) oxide is the chemical compound with the formula AgO. It is a fine black or dark brown powder that is used to prepare other silver compounds. Silver oxide can be prepared by combining aqueous solutions of silver nitrate and an alkali hydroxide. This reaction does not afford appreciable amounts of silver hydroxide due to the favorable energetics for the following reaction: US patent 20050050990 describes the preparation of AgO with properties suitable for use as a fine grained conductive paste filler. AgO features linear, two-coordinate Ag centers linked by tetrahedral oxides. It is isostructural with CuO. It
Silver usually obtained by reacting silver or silver monofluoride with the strongest known oxidizing agent, krypton difluoride. Silver and gold have rather low chemical affinities for oxygen, lower than copper, and it is therefore expected that silver oxides are thermally quite unstable. Soluble silver(I) salts precipitate dark-brown silver(I) oxide, AgO, upon the addition of alkali. (The hydroxide AgOH exists only in solution; otherwise it spontaneously decomposes to the oxide.) Silver(I) oxide is very easily reduced to metallic silver, and decomposes to silver and oxygen above 160 °C. This and other silver(I) compounds may be oxidized by the strong oxidizing agent peroxodisulfate