Optical properties of Ag–TiO_2 nanocermet films prepared by cosputtering and multilayer deposition techniques

Abstract

Ag-TiO(2) nanocermet thin films, deposited for optical filtering applications by two sputtering techniques, codeposition and multilayer deposition, exhibit surface plasmon absorption in the spectral range 450-500 nm. The cosputtering technique induces a columnar growth, whereas multilayer deposition produces a more-random distribution of silver inclusions. Both films have large, flat silver grains at the air-cermet interface. An optical double-heterogeneous layer model based on the experimental morphological parameters of the films accounts well for their experimental transmittance, notably for extra absorption near 700 nm, which is attributed to a surface plasmon in the flat silver grains of the surface.

Structural and optical properties of nanostructured TiO2 thin films fabricated by glancing angle deposition

“…Especially, TiO 2 thin films are useful for optical devices due to their desirable properties such as high refractive index, low absorption coefficient and high transparency in the visible and near-infrared region [11]. In the present paper, nanostructured TiO 2 thin films grown by glancing angle deposition technique are studied.…”

Embedding Ag Nanoparticles into MgF2 Nanorod Arrays

“…For example, metal or semiconductor nanoparticles embedded in dielectric or polymer materials show distinct optical properties for potential applications in optics, optoelectronics, optical coating for solar energy collection and conversion, sensing, and bioengineering; [2,3] Transition metal catalysts improve the hydrogen storage thermodynamics and kinetics of metal (like Mg) hydrides for the development in solid state hydrogen storage application; [1] Single wall carbon nanotube polymer composite shows ultrafast optical switching properties for high-quality all-optical switches; [5] etc. Intense efforts have been carried out to develop various methods for fabricating novel nanocomposites/doped nanomaterials, mainly via chemical and physical routes, including sol-gel, [6] ball milling, [1] ion implantation, [7] ultrasound radiation, [8] electrodeposition, [9] chemical vapor deposition, [10] physical vapor co-deposition (co-evaporation and co-sputtering), [11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21] and hybrid growth techniques. [2] Using these methods, most of the obtained nanocomposites/doped nanomaterials are in the form of powders or films.…”

“…We chose to use MgF 2 as the dielectric host due to its high dielectric constant, and Ag as the metal guest due to its well defined surface plasmon resonant (SPR) absorbance peak. [14][15][16][17] The GLACD technique is a combination of co-deposition and glancing angle deposition (GLAD) technique in a physical vapor deposition system. The co-deposition provides a way to evaporate two or more materials simultaneously to form composite or doped materials, and to change the composition of the resulting composite/doped structures by varying the relative ratio of the deposition rates of two or more sources.…”

Using ion beams to tune the nanostructure and optical response of co-deposited Ag : BN thin films

“…where the volume fraction f of silver was set to 9%, according to x-ray fluorescence results, the dielectric function ε i of the metal clusters was assumed to be the one of bulk silver [34], and the values of the depolarization factors L xy and L z [35] were calculated from the H/D values determined by GISAXS. Figure 5 regroups the refractive indices n u and extinction coefficients k u of the nanocomposite layer calculated in the case of the Ar/N assisted sample, following the relation ε u = (n u +jk u ) 2 .…”