Formation of silver metal nanoclusters in MgO by MeV Ag implantation

Nanoclusters of Ag metal in MgO(100) single crystals was formed by implantation of 1.5 MeV silver ions at fluences of 6 × 10¹⁶ ion/cm² and at 1.2 × 10¹⁷ion/cm², and subsequent annealing at temperatures between 600°C to 1100°C. The formation of the Ag metallic clusters was confirmed using optical absorption spectrophotometry by the absorption band at 430 nm. This is in agreement with the theoretical prediction using Mie's theory, with calculated average nanocluster size about 3 nm. Using ion channeling we confirmed that the orientation of the Ag nanoclusters was in the same direction of the host crystal. Using Z-scan we found the nonlinear refractive index of Ag implanted MgO to be 4.9 × 10^-8 esu.