Question

Why aqueous silver nitrate is not used in a salt bridge when connecting a half-cell containing Zn and 1.00 mol/L ZnCl2(aq) to another half-cell

Answer 1

Silver ions $(Ag^+)$ react with the Chloride ions $(Cl^-)$ to form a precipitate. The end product consume the free ions of Silver ions$(Ag^+)$ , impairing current flow. Accordingly, the activities within the cell stops.

The net ionic equation for the reaction is;

$Ag^+_{(aq)}+Cl^-_{(aq)}\to AgCl_{(s)}$