A low roughness conductive silver film on a fiber substrate was fabricated via a catalytic surface activation (needed to initiate electroless silver deposition) with spark produced gold aerosol nanoparticles Gold had a similar lattice parameter with silver in crystallinity and thus a crystallographic misfit between gold activated substrate and silver was minimized during the deposition resulting in formation of a flat silver film Properties were compared with those obtained with palladium aerosol activation the gold activation enhanced thin-metallic film properties in surface root-mean-square roughness (nm 8 gold vs 44 palladium) and electrical resistivity (mu Omega cm 64 gold vs 498 palladium) at 88 mg/g (silver/substrate) in deposition amount (c) 2010 Elsevier B V All rights reserved