Precipitation of Silver Particles in Glasses by Ion Irradiation

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Abstract
Quantum-sized silver particles have been precipitated from glass in the ternary system Ag2O–Al2O3–P2O5 by ion irradiation at 10–20 keV energy. The optical absorption band in the vicinity of 420 nm wavelength due to plasma resonance increased in intensity with increasing irradiation dose up to 1016 ions/cm2, but decreased with higher dose irradiation. The attainable absorption intensity caused by ion irradiation was influenced by parameters such as ion energy, ion species and Ag2O content in the glass. N+ 2 and Ar+ ions with 20 keV energy gave the absorption coefficient of 20000 cm-1 for glass containing 20 mol% Ag2O. The driving force of particle formation is attributed to the preferential sputtering of oxygen over other constituents during ion irradiation.