Abstract
Thin films with approximate compositions of Ag50Cd50 and Ag38Cd62, corresponding to the intermediate phases AgCd and Ag5Cd8 found in the Ag–Cd intermetallic system, were deposited by two independent approaches—(1) co-evaporation of silver and cadmium and (2) deposition of consecutive very thin sublayers from the two metals (stacks) without further annealing. The alloying of the elements in the as-deposited thin films was studied by X-ray diffraction analysis. All samples contained a mixture of intermetallic Ag–Cd phases. The deposition method has a significant influence on both the phase formation and the structure of the as-deposited thin films. The co-evaporation method leads to formation of a wider variety of intermetallic compounds appearing as larger grains on the surface, while the alloying of Ag–Cd stacks reflects in much smaller dimensions of the grains, composed mainly by the phases corresponding to the composition of the thin films. The optical properties of the thin film coatings were characterized by UV–Vis–NIR spectrophotometry and spectroscopic ellipsometry. The dispersion of the complex permittivity, \(\varepsilon^{*} = \varepsilon^{\prime} + j \cdot \varepsilon^{\prime\prime}\), was analyzed by the Drude–Lorentz model. The results show that the thin Ag–Cd films possess smaller values of the imaginary part of the complex permittivity than the thin silver films in the spectral region 4–6 eV. A maximum in the spectral range 6.2–8 eV of the loss function, \(\mathrm{Im}\{-1/{\varepsilon }^{*}\}\) is observed. Based on these results the potential application of the intermetallic compounds AgCd and Ag5Cd8 as materials for UV plasmonics and photonics devices has been discussed.
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Acknowledgements
This work is financially supported by contract KP-06-N38/8 - 05.12.2019 “Nanoscale 5p-block and silver coatings for plasmonic applications” with the Bulgarian National Science Fund (BNSF).
Funding
This work is financially supported by contract KP-06-N38/8 - 05.12.2019 “Nanoscale 5p-block and silver coatings for plasmonic applications” with the Bulgarian National Science Fund (BNSF).
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All authors contributed to the study conception and design. Material preparation, data collection and analysis were performed by RT (thin film deposition and spectroscopic ellipsometry), TH-V (XRD analysis), VK (thin film deposition and UV–Vis–NIR spectrophotometry analysis), VS (AFM), AA (thin film deposition), and GM (X-ray microanalysis). The first draft of the manuscript was written by RT and TH-V and all authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.
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Todorov, R., Hristova-Vasileva, T., Katrova, V. et al. Formation, structure, and optical performance of AgCd/Ag5Cd8 phases in thin film form. J Mater Sci: Mater Electron 34, 1093 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10854-023-10522-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10854-023-10522-7