Absorption and luminescence of silver nanocomposite soda-lime glass formed by Ag+–Na+ ion-exchange

Metal nanocomposite glasses are formed by a multi step methodology which involves incorporation of the metal ions into the glass by ion-exchange process followed by suitable treatments like low mass ion irradiation or thermal annealing resulting in the aggregation of the metal ions to form nano dimension metal clusters. These embedded metal nanoclusters are well investigated by the optical absorption spectroscopy which gives information regarding the size and shape of the metal clusters embedded in the dielectric matrix. The Ag{sup +} ion-exchanged and annealed soda-lime glasses exhibit photoluminescence around 445 nm at two excitation wavelengths. He{sup +} ion irradiation of the ion-exchanged soda-lime glass resulted in the formation of Ag metal nano crystallites with a thin metal film on the irradiated surface. The Glancing incidence X-ray diffraction study confirmed the formation of Ag nano crystals inside the dielectric matrix. Photoluminescence vanished in the irradiated samples with the neutralization of Ag{sup +} ions into Ag metal nano crystallites.