Effect of ablation time on femtosecond laser synthesis of Au- Ag colloidal nanoalloys

Abstract

Au-Ag nanoalloys have been synthesized by laser irradiation technique. First, Au and Ag nanoparticles were prepared from Au and Ag pure metal (99.9%) ablated using an 800 nm femtosecond laser in distilled water. Using the same laser, Au and Ag nanoparticle with 1:1 ratio were subsequently mixed and irradiated with various irradiation time, i.e. 0, 5, 20, and 35 minutes. We varied the ablation time for each metal nanoparticles, i.e. 25 minutes and 1 hour to see its effect on the production of nanoalloys in the subsequent irradiation. Au-Ag nanoalloys were characterized and analyzed using transmission electron microscope and UV-Vis spectrophotometry. The result shows that Au-Ag nanoalloys were already formed in 20 minutes irradiation, either for the sample ablated for 25 minutes or 1 hour. The result of TEM shows that the size of Au-Ag nanoalloys prepared from 1 hour ablation was around 15.03 nm.