Abstract
Metallic nanoparticles (NPs) have received recently considerable interest of photonic and photovoltaic communities. In this work, we report the optoelectronic properties of gold NPs (Au-NPs) obtained by depositing very thin gold layers on glass substrates through thermal evaporation electron-beam assisted process. The effect of mass thickness of the layer was evaluated. The polycrystalline Au-NPs, with grain sizes of 14 and 19 nm tend to be elongated in one direction as the mass thickness increase. A 2 nm layer deposited at 250°C led to the formation of Au-NPs with 10-20 nm average size, obtained by SEM images, while for a 5 nm layer the wide size elongates from 25 to 150 nm with a mean at 75 nm. In the near infrared region was observed an absorption enhancement of amorphous silicon films deposited onto the Au-NPs layers with a corresponding increase in the PL peak for the same wavelength region.