Optical investigation of soda lime glass with buried silver nanoparticles synthesised by ion implantation

In the present research work silver nanoparticles embedded soda lime glass nanocomposites were fabricated by Ag+-Na+ ion-exchange technique followed by 200 keV Ar+ ion implantation at normal incidence with fluence of 1 × 1015, 1 × 1016, 5 × 1016 and 1 × 1017 ions cm−2. Modifications induced in sample morphology were investigated using field-emission electron microscopy (FE-SEM) while energy dispersive analysis of X-rays (EDAX) spectroscopy was used for compositional analysis. UV-visible spectroscopy was utilized to carry out a comprehensive optical analysis of these nanocomposites so as to estimate some of the useful optical parameters like optical energy gap (Eg), Urbach's energy (Eu), refractive index (n), real (ε1) and imaginary (ε2) parts of dielectric function, skin depth and optical conductivity. Appearance of a narrow band in the transmission spectra around 342 nm in UV region for the nanocomposites synthesised with the doses of 1 × 1016, 5 × 1016 and 1 × 1017 Ar+ ions cm−2 can be of significant importance as UV based narrow band pass filters. The optical energy gap of virgin soda lime glass decreased from the value of 3.65 eV to 3.30 eV for silver nanoparticles embedded soda lime glass nanocomposite with a dose of 1 × 1017 Ar+ ions cm−2 whereas Urbach's energy showed an increase from 0.19 eV for virgin soda lime glass to 1.09 eV for the same sample. Similarly, refractive index increased from the value of 1.51 for virgin glass to the value of 1.83 for the sample with 1 × 1017 Ar+ ions cm−2 at 500 nm. In addition to these optical parameters, dispersion behavior of refractive index of thus formed nanocomposites has also been studied on the basis of single-effective-oscillator model put forward by Wemple and DiDomenico.