Noble metallic nanostructures: preparation, properties, applications

The process of formation and the characteristics are studied of noble metal nanostructures created by pulsed laser ablation in vacuum. Femtosecond (fs) and nanosecond (ns) laser systems lasing at different wavelengths are used. Several different modifications of the pulsed lased deposition (PLD) technique, as off-axis deposition and glancing angle deposition configurations are used to create nanostructures. Laser annealing of single or bimetal thin films is used to fabricate alloyed nanostructures. The possibility is demonstrated of tuning the optical properties of gold nanostructures on flexible substrates. Different experimental techniques, as fast photography, optical emission spectroscopy, FE-SEM, AFM, TEM, and Raman spectroscopy are applied to characterize the noble metallic nanostructures produced. The optical spectra of the Au and Ag nanostructures are also studied experimentally and theoretically. The theoretical simulation methods used are: molecular dynamic (MD), finite difference time domain (FDTD) and a method based on the generalized multi-particle Mie (GMM) theory. Applications of noble metal nanostructures to surface enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) and biophotonics are briefly considered.