Growth Dymanics and Plasmonic response of Silver nanoparticles deposited on nanodots nanorippled templates

Abstract

The atomistic detail of silver silica interaction is studied through Molecular Dynamics. An amorphous newlineflat silica substrate is generated through the quench algorithm. A modified Buckhingam newlinepotential is used to simulate the interatomic interaction of silicon and oxygen atoms. The Ag- newlineSiO2 interaction is simulated by a simple pairwise Morse potential. The dependence of sticking newlineprobability of silver adatom to the silica surface is shown for different values of binding energy, newlinesubstrate temperature, interaction time between the adatom and the surface and the kinetic energy newlineof the incoming silver adatom. We report a number of dynamical events observed during newlinethe simulation of cluster growth on the flat silica surface for Eb = 0:2 eV . Successive deposition newlinesimulations leading to the growth of silver clusters on the flat silica surface is performed for newlineEb = 0:2 eV and Eb = 0:6 eV . The hop time for the silver adatom on the surface is calculated newlinethrough Arrhenius equation for the both values of the binding energy so as to understand the newlineobserved growth behaviour. We have also simulated the adatom surface interaction for long newlinetime scale using otf-Kinetic Monte Carlo (otf-KMC) technique to understand the cluster growth newlinefor real world time scales. newlineIn-situ Rutherford Backscattering Spectrometry (RBS) and Molecular Dynamics (MD) simulations newlinehave been used to investigate the growth dynamics of silver on a flat and the rippled silica newlinesurface. The calculated sticking coefficient of silver over a range of incidence angles shows a newlinesimilar behaviour to the experimental results for an average surface binding energy of a silver newlineadatom of 0.2 eV. This value was used to parameterise the MD model of the cumulative deposition newlineof silver in order to understand the growth mechanisms. Snapshots from deposition newlinesimulations reveal the dynamics behind the formation of silver clusters on such a surface. Both newlinethe model and the RBS results show marginal difference between the atomic concentration of newlinesilver on the flat and the rippled silica surf