Abstract
Glass is an inexpensive and readily available material making it an indispensable element in the many fields of science and technology. This thesis describes three methods of manipulating the optical and structural properties of glass and nanocomposite glass for varying applications. These are: thermal poling of glass, electric field assisted dissolution of glass embedded with silver nanoparticles and the irradiation of glass embedded with silver nanoparticles. Each method will be adapted to present novel and widely applicable approaches to the modification of glass.Thermal poling of glass will be used to create diffractive optical elements (DOEs) in soda-lime float glass. Thermal poling of glass results in a change to the glass structure, by using an electrode with a periodic pattern the glass was selectively restructured creating an effective DOE. The parameters of the process, namely applied voltage and temperature, were investigated for their part in the efficiency of the resultant DOE.
A second method for the fabrication of DOEs will use electric field assisted dissolution (EFAD) of glass embedded with spherical silver nanoparticles. This process leads to the dissolution of silver nanoparticle into the surrounding glass. By selecting a mesh electrode with a periodic pattern an effective DOE was fabricated by selectively dissolving the silver nanoparticles in contact with the electrode. As with thermal poling, the voltage and temperature of the process will be investigated in order to produce more efficient DOEs.
Glass with embedded spherical silver nanoparticles was irradiated using a nanosecond (36 ns) pulsed laser at 532 nm. Laser irradiation led to the formation of a thin surface film containing uniformly distributed nanoparticles - with an increase in the overall average nanoparticle size. The influence of the applied number of laser pulses on the optical and structural properties of such a recipient nanocomposite was investigated.
| Date of Award | 2016 |
|---|---|
| Original language | English |
| Sponsors | Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council |
| Supervisor | Amin Abdolvand (Supervisor) & William Gillespie (Supervisor) |