Sol-gel derived metal oxides doped with silver nanoparticles as tunable plasmonic materials

✍ Scribed by Dolgov, Leonid ;Kiisk, Valter ;Reedo, Valter ;Maaroos, Aarne ;Sildos, Ilmo ;Kikas, Jaak

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 2010
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 363 KB
• Volume: 207
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0031-8965
• DOI: 10.1002/pssa.200983360

✦ Synopsis

Abstract

New composite materials made of transition metal oxides doped with silver nanoparticles are proposed. Titanium and zirconium dioxide matrices were prepared by sol–gel method adjusted for addition of silver nanodopants. Commercially available silver nanoparticles in the form of powder (30–50 nm) or colloidal solution (5–15 nm) were used for doping of oxide hosts. To recover plasmonic properties of silver after annealing in air, reduction of samples in the H~2~:Ar atmosphere was performed. As a result, the silver‐containing TiO~2~ and ZrO~2~ films of good optical quality with plasmonic absorption near 400 nm were obtained. The potential of embedding of luminescent markers (like rare earth ions) into considered films is discussed.