Fabrication of isolated platinum nanowire gratings and nanoparticles on silica substrate by femtosecond laser irradiation

We demonstrate the fabrication of isolated platinum nanostructures on a silica substrate by using femtosecond laser. Nanowire gratings which have short periodicities of approximately 50 nm were formed by irradiating a platinum thin film deposited on a fused silica substrate with 800-nm wavelength femtosecond laser pulses. The structural evolution from the nanowire gratings to nanoparticles was observed only by increasing the number of pulses. The periodicities or diameters of the structures showed good uniformity. Scanning electron microscopy of the surfaces and theoretical calculation of temperature profile using a two-temperature model revealed that the structural evolution can be attributed to the fragmentation of the formed nanowires. The presented method provides a simple and high-throughput technique for fabricating both metal nanowire gratings and nanoparticles, which have the potential to be used for the fabrication of optical, electrical and biomedical devices.