LAUSR

Abstract We comparatively study the morphological evolutions of silver nanowires under nanosecond-pulsed laser irradiation and thermal treatment in ambient air. While single-crystalline, pure Ag nanospheres could be produced by laser-driven Rayleigh instability, the particles produced by heat treatment were subject to oxidation and exhibited polyhedron shapes. The different results are attributed to the significantly different time scales of the two processes. In this article, we also show that bimetallic Ag-Au nanospheres can be synthesized by irradiating Ag nanowires coated with a thin Au film using a pulsed laser beam. This may provide a facile route to tune the plasmonic behavior of metal nanoparticles.