ИСТИНА

Today, nanotechnology is one of the most popular trends in modern science. For the first time, Norio Taniguchi used the term "nanotechnology" in 1974. He gave this name to nanostructures manufacture. Modern technologies allow creating artificial complex structures with properties unavailable for natural ones. Thanks to the development of technologies and methods of creating and characterizing, nowadays nanoporous materials are continuously expanding the range of their applications in optics, optoelectronics, chemistry, biomedicine, waste treatment, hydrogen storage, and others. Particular attention is focused on creation and characterization of composite materials and systems based on the nanoporous structures because of fascinating prospects for their use in catalysis, biosensing, creating high-strength materials, optical components and optoelectronic devices, and other applications. Metal nanoparticles (NP) attract considerable interest for their unique optical properties based on the localized surface plasmon resonance, light-induced collective oscillations of the conduction electrons. Since the wavelength of localized surface plasmon resonance depends on the size, the shape, and the environment, NP are extremely useful in optical and nonlinear-optical applications. Creation and characterization of artificial composite systems consisted of a dielectric substrate and NP are nowadays the subject of many investigations. Here we consider a transparent three-dimensional composite based on a nanoporous glass substrate with cylindrical pores of radius of 2 nm. Silver NP are synthesized via the impregnation of the nanopores with a silver-containing precursor and following thermo-chemical processing. Such composites are promising for catalysis, creation of optical components, and others. The approach developed here allows nondestructive and cheap characterization of microstructure of 3D transparent nanocomposites containing metal NP.