Atmosphere effects on the formation and evolution of Zn and ZnO nanoparticles in Zn ion implanted SiO2

Metallic Zn nanoparticles (NPs) have been fabricated in the near surface region of SiO2 by implantation of Zn ions at energy of 45 keV up to 5.0 × 1016 ions/cm2. Such NPs were then subjected to the furnace annealing in different atmospheres. Various techniques, such as ultraviolet–visible spectroscopy (UV–vis), grazing incidence X-ray diffraction spectroscopy (GXRD), photoluminescence spectroscopy (PL), were employed to characterize the formation and evolution of the Zn and ZnO NPs, and also their related optical properties. Our results clearly show that the evolution of Zn NPs depends strongly on the annealing atmosphere. ZnO NPs have been effectively formed with preferred (0 0 2) and (1 0 3) orientations when the samples were annealed in a flow of nitrogen gas or sequentially annealed in nitrogen and oxygen ambient. The PL measurements give the evidence that ZnO NPs with high-quality could be formed when the samples were sequentially annealed in the flows of nitrogen and oxygen gases.