Oxygen ion induced variations in the structural and Linear/Nonlinear optical properties of the PVA/PANI/Ag nanocomposite film

Abstract In this work, the solution cast method was used to synthesize PVA/PANI/Ag nanocomposite films. Subsequently, the PVA/PANI/Ag films have been irradiated using oxygen ion beam irradiation fluence (8x1017, 16x1017, and 24x1017 ions/cm2). The effect of ion irradiation on the crystal structure and functional groups of PVA/PANI/Ag films was investigated by X-ray diffraction (XRD) and Fourier transforms infrared (FT-IR) respectively. Additionally, the scanning electron microscope (SEM) analysis was used to reveal the change in surface morphology of the irradiated films. The optical band gap and Urbach energy of the unirradiated and irradiated PVA/PANI/Ag films have been determined by employing Tauc’s relation. Furthermore, the linear optical parameters, including extinction coefficient, refractive index, dielectric constant, and loss have been deduced. Besides, the dispersion parameters of the studied films were computed by Wemple and Di-Domenico model. Additionally, non-linear optical susceptibility and non-linear refractive index have been calculated for the unirradiated and irradiated films. The reported results show that the irradiated film by 24x1017 ions/cm2 is considered the best for non-linear optical applications and more convenient to the optoelectronic device.