Optical and structural changes of silver nanoparticles during photochromic transformation

Silver nanoparticles embedded in titanium oxide change their color upon irradiation with visible light. Here we investigate the origin of this photochromic effect. The color change is found to result chiefly from a reduction of the optical extinction peak of the photoexcited particle plasmons. From a comparison with x-ray diffraction experiments, we conclude that this reduction is caused by a photoinduced decrease of the mean size of the silver nanocrystals.