Peculiarities of ion-exchange in poled glasses

Abstract

We demonstrate for the first time that the results of ion exchange processing of thermally poled soda-lime glass essentially depend on the poling conditions. In particular, the processing of vacuum-poled soda-lime glass in silver-sodium nitrate melt results in the diffusion and reduction of silver ions followed by clustering silver nanoparticles in the subsurface layer of the glass after either ion-exchange or additional heat treatment of the ion-exchanged samples. Poling in air atmosphere with deposited gold film anode prevents silver ions penetration in the glass, but electric field stimulated diffusion of gold in this configuration leads to the formation of gold nanoparticles in the glass after heat treatment. It is also shown that corona poling of the glass in air atmosphere does not completely block silver penetration.