Nanosized spherical silver particles in glass, introduced by an ion exchange plus annealing procedure, have been deformed at elevated temperatures to uniformly arranged prolate spheroidal particles by homogeneous glass stretching at constant stress. Thereupon, the optical absorption band splits into two bands according to the long and short mes of the deformed particles. Since colour and polarizing effect of these particles may widely be controlled by variation of their aspect ratio this technique enables the fabrication of novel dichroic polarizers with spectral characteristics throughout the whole visible range. Local thermally induced shape relaxation of deformed particles makes colour structuring possible on the micrometer scale. Characterisation of these materials by optical absorption spectroscopy and transmission electron microscopy demonstrates the influence of deformation and shape relaxation on their spectral and polarizing properties. (C) 1999 Acta Metallurgica Inc. [References: 7]

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