OPTICAL AND STRUCTURAL PROPERTIES OF SILVER NANOPARTICLES EMBEDDED IN INDIUM OXIDE FILMS

Abstract

Nanoparticles of silver-embedded indium oxide thin films have been prepared on glass and silicon substrates. Silver concentration were 3 wt.% and 5 wt.% as measured by X-ray fluorescence. X-ray diffraction reveals that indium oxide of these samples remains amorphous even after pre-annealing at 400°C. The optical absorption of the samples manifests the surface plasmon resonance (SPR) phenomena, which varies with Ag content. The Ag nanoparticles radius was estimated with Mie classical theory by using the SPR data analysis. The nonlinear optical properties of films on glass substrate were investigated using z-scan technique. Under cw excitation the films exhibit large reverse saturation absorption and negative nonlinearities. The real and imaginary parts of third order susceptibility of the samples were measured and the imaginary part which arise from the change in absorption is found to be dominant.