Solid-State Dewetting of Thin Silver Films into Spherical Nanoparticles under High-Current Pulsed Ion Beam Irradiation

Noble metal nanoparticles (NPs) are important in many applications, including light trapping of photovoltaic cells, photoelectrochemical applications, etc. The present study reports the formation of silver NPs from the as-deposited silver coatings on fused silica substrates by solid-state dewetting induced by high-current intense pulsed ion beam (IPIB) irradiation. We described the effects of IPIB irradiation with different ion beam current densities and numbers of pulses on NP morphology and compared the results with conventional rapid thermal annealing (RTA). IPIB irradiation enables superfast heating (higher than 109 K/s) and cooling, providing a superfast annealing solid-state dewetting mechanism. Our results demonstrate that the sphericity of silver NPs is enhanced after IPIB irradiation relative to RTA-annealed silver NPs. Our results suggest further possibilities of shape and sphericity control of silver NPs with very fast heating/cooling annealing rates.