Photochemical silver nanoparticles deposition on sol–gel TiO2 for plasmonic properties utilization

This paper shows investigations on silver nanoparticles deposition using simple photochemical method on sol–gel coated titania. The influence of titania substrate, silver precursor concentration, light intensity and irradiation time are considered as a factors determining the microstructure. The average diameter of the particles and surface coverage are calculated from SEM microstructure investigations and confirmed by AFM imaging. The crystalline phase in titania layers were determined by TEM and Raman spectroscopy. The optical measurements of absorbance and absorption were shown indicating that there was no absorption of the light used in experiment even though deposition of nano silver was confirmed. Finally, the plasmonic properties were simulated for the model particles by finite difference time domain method. Possible application of obtained structure was proposed.