Oxidation of silver nanostructures

Silver nanostructures were prepared on Si substrate. Thin Ag films (2 and 6 nm thickness) were deposited using a tabletop dc magnetron sputtering coater (EM SCD 500, Leica) in pure Ar plasma. The Ag target was of 99.99% purity, the rate of layer deposition was about 0.4 nm·s−1 , and the incident power was in the range of 30–40 W. The layer thickness was measured in situ using a quartz crystal microbalance. To form nanostructures, the as-prepared films were put into a hot furnace and annealed in argon atmosphere at different temperatures for different periods of time. Oxidaton of silver nanostructures was measured by XPS method. Additionally a bulk silver was measured. In this dataset XPS O1s specra are presented.