Journal of Physical Studies 23(4), Article 4601 [7 pages] (2019)
DOI: https://doi.org/10.30970/jps.23.4601

TOPOLOGY OF PLASMONIC SILVER AND GOLD PRE-PERCOLATION FILMS

I. Bolesta, A. Vaskiv, S. Velgosh, O. Kushnir, Ya. Shmygelskyy

Ivan Franko National University of Lviv,
107, Tarnavsky St., Lviv, UA-79017, Ukraine,
e-mail: alex.kuschnir@gmail.com

The topology of silver and gold pre-percolation films was investigated by atomic force microscopy. Such films are formed in the initial stages of the deposition of metals on various substrates. In the article, the films are considered to be metal-dielectric nanocomposites with fractal structure. The voids between the metal particles act as a dielectric component of the composite.

The roughness and the correlation length of the composites' surface were determined for the studied samples by approximating the sections of two-dimensional autocorrelation functions with the Gauss peak-function. Their dependences on the mass thickness of the films were obtained.

Algorithms for estimating the shape and the size of metallic nanoparticles are proposed. Using them, the dependences of the metal nanoparticle sizes on the technological parameters of production were determined, namely: the dependence of the nanoparticle sizes on the deposition time at a steady speed and the dependence of the nanoparticle size on the substrate temperature for films with the same mass thickness. The special image processing determines the direction of the distribution of metal nanoparticles. It is shown that the constituent structures of pre-percolation films of metals have a local ordering of particles in the direction. However, this does not affect the properties of the samples as a whole. The Hausdorff and correlation fractal dimensions of the studied nanocomposites were determined. It is shown that these integral parameters depend on the mass thickness. The trends of dependencies are the same, while the absolute values of the Hausdorff and correlation fractal dimensions do not coincide for the films of both metals -- silver and gold.

PACS number(s): 68.37.Ps, 61.46.+w, 05.45.Df

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