Effects of irradiation defects on the nucleation of silver nanoparticles in spinel

•A new application of irradiation defects in synthesis of metal nanoparticle was shown in this study.•The introduction of irradiation defects enhanced Ag nanoparticle nucleation.•The defect enhancing the nucleation of nanoparticles could be the nano-sized cavities.

Composites with embedded metal nanoparticles attract much interest due to their unique physical properties, which considerably depend on size and shape of the nanoparticles, and on interparticle distance and dispersity of these parameters. Crystal defects can have an effect on the nucleation of nanoparticles. In this paper, the effect of defects on the nucleation and growth of silver nanoparticles was investigated. Argon ions with kinetic energy of 110 keV were implanted into spinel crystals, to produce defects in the surface-near region, and silver ions were then implanted into the region rich in defects. UV–VIS spectroscopy and TEM were used to analyze the samples. It is found that the introduction of defects can enhance the nucleation of silver nanoparticles and mediate their size distribution, and that the size of these nanoparticles for the sample with argon pre-implantation is larger than that in the sample without argon pre-implantation. During an annealing process, defects can improve the growth efficiency of nanoparticles.