The production of small colloidal silver particles in thin SiO2 sol-gel glass layers

Fabrication of photo-patterned microstructures in an organic–inorganic hybrid material incorporating silver nanoparticles

“…Ag-doped sol-gel derived silica is of interest for a range of applications, including photochromic glass [9], non-linear optics [10], antibacterial materials [11] and as a substrate for surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) in sensing applications [12,13]. In general, these materials have been synthesized by dissolution of a silver salt in a precursor sol prepared from tetraethoxysilane (TEOS) or tetramethoxysilane (TMOS), followed by reduction of the silver ions to metallic silver by electrochemical reduction [14,15], thermal treatment in air [16,17] or H 2 [18], or irradiation with UV light [16] or gamma rays [19]. Ag has also been doped into a sol-gel derived silica matrix by ion exchange and subsequent reduction [20], or by addition of an aqueous Ag colloidal dispersion to the precursor sol [21].…”

Sol–Gel Synthesis and Characterization of Ag and Au Nanoparticles in SiO2, TiO2, and ZrO2 Thin Films

“…I N THE past few years the sol-gel process has emerged as a very promising technique for the synthesis of noble metal-dielectric nanocomposites [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20] with enhanced nonlinear optical properties. The reasons for such a fruitful application of the sol-gel process can be identified in the molecular scale homogeneity of the starting solutions, the low processing temperatures, and the possibility of incorporating many different metal dopants into different matrixes.…”

Solgel synthesis and structural characterization of silver-silica nanocomposites

“…Nanocomposites embedded in a transparent glass matrix produce a special coloration due to the presence of characteristic absorption bands in the visible spectrum and the spectrum of absorption band can be utilized in optoelectronics [8,9]. In recent past, the physical properties of silica glass containing the different amounts of silver were discussed [10][11][12]. Recently, it has been shown that silica glasses containing certain amounts of silver, prepared by solgel method, can be crystallized in cristobalite phase at annealing temperatures much lower than 500°C predicted by the phase diagrams.…”