Evidence for enhanced optical properties through plasmon resonance energy transfer in silver silica nanocomposites

Abstract

Silver nanoparticles were dispersed in the pores of monolithic mesoporous silica prepared by a modified sol-gel method. Structural and microstructural analyses were carried out by Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy and transmission electron microscopy. X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy was employed to determine the chemical states of silver in the silica matrix. Optical absorption studies show the evolution absorption band around 300 nm for silver (Ag) in a silica matrix and it was found to be redshifted to 422 nm on annealing. Photoluminescence studies indicate the presence of various luminescent emitting centers corresponding to silver ions and silver dimers in the SiO2 matrix. The enhancement of absorption and photoluminescence properties is attributed to plasmon resonance energy transfer from Ag nanoparticles to luminescent species in the matrix.

Study of Tunable Plasmonic, Photoluminscence, and Nonlinear Optical Behavior of Ag Nanoclusters Embedded in a Glass Matrix for Multifunctional Applications

“…The emissions in the range of 438–480 nm are assigned to the presence of Ag 2 + sites, Ag dimmers and Ag + _ Ag 0 pairs whereas the region from 490 to 550 nm can be attributed to the presence of Ag 3 + sites and partly Ag dimmers inside the glass matrix . In addition to these a PL band in the region 581–590 may be associated with L‐centers, Si–O based defects or non‐bridging oxygen centers inside the glass matrix .…”

“…The step 2, step 3 and step 4 the different emission band observed due the presence of different ionic states of silver ions and presence of crystal defects, respectively. The near‐surface accumulation in the pristine sample has been ascribed to the presence of Ag 2 + ions and Ag 3 + ions coming from the bath used, which subsequently converts into Ag neutral atoms after annealing as evident form the PL spectra at higher annealing temperatures . The different peak positions for the PL emissions excited by three wavelengths of 325, 375, and 450 nm, respectively as shown in the electronic supplementary material [ESM‐2].…”

“…The activation energy was obtained using an Arrhenius equation with respect to annealing temperatures, which was fitted as‐ …”

Sol-gel synthesized plasmonic nanoparticles and their integration into dye sensitized solar cells

“…The peak observed at 1069cm -1 is assigned to Si-O-Si asymmetric stretching mode . The peak observed at 462 cm -1 corresponds to the Si-O-Si symmetric stretching [2,[36][37][38][39].…”

“…Noble metal nanoparticles research has attracted a lot of attention due to a wide range of potential applications in plasmonic solar cells, surface enhanced Raman scattering, surface enhanced fluorescence and metamaterial absorbers to count a few [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13]. Plasmonics is one of the most important fields that make use of the nanoscale properties of noble metals.…”