Annealing-induced metallic core–shell clusterization in soda-lime glass: an optical absorption study—experiment and theory

Abstract

Abstract Composites formed by metal nanoclusters embedded in glass matrices exhibit peculiar striking optical properties that have made them famous since the millennia. Syntheses of these composite glasses are done in many ways like binary ion-exchange followed by suitable treatments like furnace or laser annealing, ion irradiation and by direct implantation of metal of interest into the host matrix. Optical absorption spectroscopy has been widely used on these dielectric composites containing small metal particles. The location, width of the surface plasmon resonance, and amplitude obtained from optical absorption spectroscopy give information on the nanocluster species, their size and size distribution. By a novel route we have formed multi-component metal nanocluster composite glasses by sequential CuAg and AgCu ion-exchange. Annealing of the sequentially ion-exchanged samples resulted in the formation of core–shell structures between the two metal species which was observed well from the optical absorption spectra. Theoretically calculated optical absorption spectra showed good agreement with the experiment confirming the presence of core–shell nanoclusters inside the dielectric matrix.