I'm considering the reaction wherein ionic silver (from the dissolved nitrate) is reduced by glucose in the presence of NaOH and forms a metalic silver layer on glass.
Reading through several topics here on stackexchange it seems that it still hasn't been clearly elucidated what exactly is happening on the glass surface for reduced silver to deposit onto / bind to it (instead of just precipitating out as a powder in solution).
I'd like to know if/how glass type might affect the process:
Can I get as perfect of a mirror on a borosilicate surface as on pure SiO2 glass?
Is the silver layer in either case uniform or will is be porous at the molecular level?
I've read that a slow reduction is key. Is it so that a silver mirror is qualitatively better produced at lower temperatures (or with highly diluted reagents) over a long time than by gently heating the solution?
Could a large temperature gradient between the solution and the glass surface be advantageous for the reaction to proceed much faster on the surface than in solution (e.g. mixing a solution at 10C into a glass container whose surface is brought to 80C)?
How can the process be optimized to produce a perfectly insulating silver layer at the molecular level?