[nanoboy]

In electroless plating, traditionally a palladium surface on the substrate is required as a catalytic surface to initiate the electroless reaction.

A more modern approach is to use a silver nanoparticles layer on the substrate as the seed layer instead of palladium since silver nanoparticles surfaces are also suitable as catalyst for electroless plating.

However for the morphology of nanoparticles surfaces, when the electroless metal (e.g. copper) begins to plate on them, what would the first monolayer of the plating likely to be?  Would it be a copper shell with silver core, or would the monolayer form an alloy lattice structure?

Many thanks.