Fabrication of copper and gold nanoclusters in MgO (100) by MeV ion implantation

MeV ions of Au and Cu were implanted into single crystals of MgO (100) and the formation of metallic nanoclusters was observed by an indirect method of optical absorption spectrophotometry. Using Mei`s theory the authors related the observed optical absorption band to the formation of nanoclusters and using Doyle`s theory, as well as Rutherford Backscattering Spectrometry (RB S), the authors correlated the fill width half maximum (FWHM) of the absorption bands to the estimated size of the metallic nanoclusters between 1--10 nm. These clusters were formed by implantation above the threshold fluence for cluster formation and by a combination of threshold fluence of the implanted species and thermal annealing. The changes in the estimated size of the nanoclusters, after annealing at temperatures ranging from 5,000 C to 10,000 C, were observed using optical absorption spectrophotometry and calculated using Doyle`s theory