Optical and structural study of Ag/ZrO2/SiO2 planar waveguide structure: Glass/film/air

The objective of this work is to prepare silver zirconia nanocomposite and to measure the refractive index of the film coated on glass substrate. And also, to check whether is the composite suitable for optical waveguide. There is an increasing commercial demand for nanoparticles due to their wide applicability in various areas such as optics, electronics, catalysis, chemistry, energy and medicine. Noble metal particles such as silver and gold are of great significance due to their size-dependent optical properties. Development of new nanomaterials with metal nanoparticles (Ag, Au, etc.) deposited on oxide surfaces, embedded within pores or encapsulated in its matrices have gained much attention. The prepared solution was deposited on high purity and polished glass substrate using spin coating in the fabrication process. The precise thickness control was achieved by using the layer-by-layer deposition technique. The films are deposited on microscopic glass slides with thicknesses ranging between 1000 and 4000 nm were prepared by a multi-layer process. Films which are characterized by UV Spectroscopy and AFM. Chemical composition of the particles was investigated by X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS). Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) was also performed to find the groups of the capping materials which were responsible for the stability of the nanoparticles.