Efficient localized heating of silver nanoparticles by low-fluence femtosecond laser pulses

Highly localized heating can be obtained in plasmonic nanomaterials using laser excitation but the high fluences required often produce unacceptable damage in and near irradiated components and structures. In this work we show that plasmonic nanostructures involving aggregated Ag nanoparticles (Ag NPs) can be heated effectively without attendant damage to the surrounding material when these structures are irradiated with many overlapping femtosecond (fs) laser pulses at very low fluence. Under these conditions, the effectiveness of heating is such that the temperature of 50 nm Ag NPs can be raised to their melting point from room temperature. Aggregates of these NPs are then observed to grow into larger spherical particles as laser heating continues. Imaging of these materials shows that the initiation of melting in individual Ag NPs depends on the local geometry surrounding each NP and on the polarization of the incident laser radiation. Finite difference time domain (FDTD) simulations indicate that melting is triggered by localized surface plasmon (LSP)-induced electric field enhancement at “hotspots”.