Fabrication and optical properties of functional optical silver nano-films

Abstract

Silver nano-films were prepared by thermal evaporation. Scanning electron microscope observations showed that the silver films have nano-structures in morphology. The optical properties of silver nano-structures were obtained by ultraviolet-visible spectrometry, which shows the resonance wavelength of surface plasmon. Precise control of thermal deposition parameters allows the fabrication of silver films on glass substrates with tunable surface plasmon resonance wavelength, which makes the films to have tunable optical properties of transmittance and reflection. In this work, we have prepared silver nano-films with over 90% transmittance in the near-IR region and near 50% reflection in the visible region near the surface plasmon resonance wavelength. Due to the novel optical properties, silver nano-films have an enormous light management potential for use as an interlayer in thin-film solar cells.