In this month I investigated formation of silver nanoparticles using metal island film technique. Four layers having thicknesses of 7, 10, 15 and 20 nm were sputtered at a rate of 2 A / s on polished Si wafers. . The deposited layer thickness was read on a quartz microbalance. The resulting silver layer was then subjected to annealing on the stage heating at 250 ° C under argon for 0.5 hours. The formated islands were analyzed using SEM and AFM. Average size obtained from 7 and 10 nm layers was 60 and 105 nm. For thicker layers islands lost thier oval shape and became irregular. Surface coverage was 46, 30, 29 and 33.8 %, respectively for increasing initial layer thickness.
The obtained structere can be applied to the Si cell as a plasmonic back reflector.