Optical absorption, mechanical properties and FTIR studies of silver-doped barium phosphate glasses

Abstract

Silver-doped barium phosphate glasses, of composition 50BaO-50P2O5-4Ag2O-4SnO, were prepared by conventional melt quenching and subsequent heat treatment. Prepared glasses were heat treated for a fixed duration of 10 h at different temperatures 400, 450 and 500 C to develop silver nanoparticles of different sizes. Formation and the size of the silver nanoparticles were evaluated using the surface plasmon resonance (SPR) band of the optical absorption spectrum, which revealed that both of them were temperature dependent. Spectral positions of the SPR peaks of the glass samples heat treated at 450 and 500 C were observed around 3.0 eV. Absence of significant size dependent shift in SPR peaks of these samples from 3.0 eV indicates the formation of spherical silver nanoparticles smaller than 20 nm inside the glass matrix, which falls in the quasi-static regime of Mie theory. The effect of heat treatment on the local network structure of the phosphate glass matrix assessed using FTIR spectra shows that formation and growth of silver nanoclusters do not affect the basic metaphosphate network structure. A slight improvement is observed in density as well as in the mechanical properties of the heat treated samples due to densification of the glass matrix by dispersed silver nanoparticles.