Dielectric spectroscopy of silver nanoparticle embedded soda glass

Silver-soda glass nanocomposites have been synthesized by using ion exchange technique followed by thermal annealing. Ultraviolet-visible absorption spectroscopy and transmission electron microscopy of the ion exchanged and annealed samples confirmed the presence of silver nanoparticles embedded inside the glass matrix. The size of silver nanoparticles has been found to increase with annealing temperature. The frequency response of the dielectric constant (epsilon') and dielectric loss (tan delta) has been studied in both the soda glass and the silver nanoparticle embedded soda glass samples. The dielectric constant increases from 0.9 to 1.89 in the frequency range from 900 kHz to 70 MHz with increasing silver nanoparticle size, which in turn is enhanced as a result of increasing annealing temperature. Possible Coulomb blockade effects have been discussed to explain this novel dielectric behavior. (C) 2008 American Institute of Physics. [DOI: 10.1063/1.2982373]