Optical properties of ion exchanged and swift heavy ion beam treated silicate glasses

Silver ion exchanges on silicate glasses were carried out at different temperatures 320 °C, 400 °C, and 500 °C for 60 min. The exchanged glasses were either annealed at 500 °C for 60 min or swift heavy ion (SHI) irradiated using 120 MeV Ag 9+ ions at a fluence of 5 x 10 12 ions/cm 2 . Silver nanoparticles were formed in the samples ion exchanged at 500 °C without any post- exchange treatments. Post-exchange annealing treatment resulted in silver nanoparticle formation for samples ion exchanged at temperature of 320 °C and 400 °C. Whereas post irradiation treatment for ion exchanged sample at 320 °C resulted in Ag4 nanocluster formation. After post-irradiation, the density of Ag nanoparticles increases for the sample ion exchanged at temperature of 500 °C. RBS was used to obtain silver depth profiles in the ion exchanged samples. Near surface accumulation of Ag atoms is observed in the RBS spectra for the samples prepared at high ion exchange temperature of 500 °C or SHI irradiated samples, in which Ag nanoparticle formation was also observed. UV-vis absorption spectroscopy and Transmission Electron Microscopy (TEM) were used to obtain signatures of nano-particles and to estimate their size. The ion exchanged glasses without nanoparticles were characterized for their possible use in multimode planar waveguides. The post-exchange treated glasses lost their waveguide property, but exhibited nonlinear optical property indicating their potential use for optical switching. Open aperture z-scan measurements for the sample prepared at high ion exchange temperature of 500 °C shows optical limiting behavior, whereas the samples prepared at low ion exchange temperature followed by annealing or irradiation show saturation behavior. Copyright © 2015 VBRI Press.