Oxidation of Au/Ag films by oxygen plasma: phase separation and generation of nanoporosity

• Abdel-Aziz El Mel,
• Said A. Mansour,
• Mujaheed Pasha,
• Atef Zekri,
• Janarthanan Ponraj,
• Akshath Shetty and
• Yousef Haik

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2020, 11, 1608–1614, doi:10.3762/bjnano.11.143

• between gold and silver (Figure 7). HAADF and EDS-STEM image analysis revealed that the column was mainly constituted of gold surrounded with silver. This suggests that the migration of silver to the upper surface might have resulted from a grain-boundary diffusion mechanism. Indeed, in thin films silver

• diffusion happens either in volume (bulk diffusion) or through a grain boundary mechanism (short circuit diffusion) [22]. The latter is expected to be dominant as it exhibits a lower activation energy [23]. The following mechanism was proposed to explain the different steps of the oxidation process (Figure

Fabrication of Ag-modified hollow titania spheres via controlled silver diffusion in Ag–TiO₂ core–shell nanostructures

• Bartosz Bartosewicz,
• Malwina Liszewska,
• Bogusław Budner,
• Marta Michalska-Domańska,
• Krzysztof Kopczyński and
• Bartłomiej J. Jankiewicz

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2020, 11, 141–146, doi:10.3762/bjnano.11.12

• metal nanoparticles. A simple method employing sol–gel coating of nanoparticles with titania followed by controlled silver diffusion was developed and applied for the synthesis of Ag-modified hollow TiO2 spheres. The morphology of the synthesized structures and their chemical composition was

• fabrication step. The synthesized nanostructures exhibit a broadband optical absorption in the UV–vis range. Keywords: core–shell nanostructures; hollow spheres; silver diffusion; silver-modified titanium dioxide; titania; Findings In recent years, nanometer- to micrometer-sized inorganic hollow spheres

• silver diffusion in Ag–TiO2 core–shell nanostructures (CSNs). Our approach comprises three simple steps starting from the synthesis of the metallic core, through its coating with titania and finally annealing leading to plasmonic hollow nanostructures with plasmon resonance in a broad spectral range. SEM