In-situ fiber drawing induced synthesis of silver-tellurium semiconductor compounds

Abstract We examine the thermal drawing of zinc tellurite silver-containing glass. While the silver-doped glass fibers remain unchanged over thermal drawing under oxygenatmosphere, we establish that under argon silver doping leads to the growth of a thin, metallic-like precipitate at the fiber surface. Optical, chemical and structural analysis, supported by UV –vis, HR-TEM and XPS, reveals that the precipitate contains silver telluride nanoparticles in its first tens-of-nanometers. We believe the direct fiber-drawing induced synthesis of silver telluride semiconductor compounds could lead to development of new fiber-based devices, with applications spanning photonics or sensing.