Preparation and characterization of the transparent SiO2-Ag/PV P nanocomposite mirror film for the infrared region by sol-gel method

Transparent mirror coated, SiO2-Ag/PV P nanocomposites were prepared on the Pyrex glass slides by dip-coating technique. Embedding of the silver (Ag) nanoparticles on silica modified polyvinyl pyrrolidone (PVP) was performed by the sol-gel method. As prepared transparent mirror coated SiO2-Ag/PV P nanocomposite films were finally characterized for surface morphology, chemistry, and nano size dimensions using various advanced analytical techniques including, UV visible, Fourier transform, infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR), X-ray powder diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), dispersive x-ray analaysis (EDAX) and transmission electron microscopy (TEM) analysis. It was found that all the prepared samples were almost uniform particles of Ag nanospheres of 7-8 nm diameters arranged as double paralleled nanowires with an average length of 200-450 nm and diameters of around 20-25 nm.