I'm preparing Ag plasmonic structures and don't know how fast the oxidation process occurs.
Will my silver film oxidize more than 1-2 nm if I take the film out into air for 5-10 mins to prepare to load it into another processing chamber to cover it with an oxide capping layer?
Yes, up to 10 -15 atomic layers in, the Ag will be in the +1 oxidation state in the presence of air (oxygen) or water. Easily seen with XPS/ESCA or Auger. Diffusion considerations indicate that at 100 nm that this will occur in 10 - 100 seconds on exposure to air. It will be even more rapid for 5 nm.
Yes, up to 10 -15 atomic layers in, the Ag will be in the +1 oxidation state in the presence of air (oxygen) or water. Easily seen with XPS/ESCA or Auger. Diffusion considerations indicate that at 100 nm that this will occur in 10 - 100 seconds on exposure to air. It will be even more rapid for 5 nm.
Oxidation of Ag films in not much different than Nb. According to our experience Nb got about 2 nm even in bit longer time.
@ Thomas Equation (1) in your attached paper has a mistake:
4 Ag + O2 → 2 AgO (!)
I then got lost with more Greek letters than an Athens' post office....
So I did a test myself. I sputtered 20nm of Ag on a glass slide and measured its resistance as a function of time. It looks like the surface oxidized around 2-4nm within 1 hr of air exposure and 10nm overnight.
Thanks for the input everyone.
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