Necklace-shaped Au-Ag nanoalloys: laser-assisted synthesis and nonlinear optical properties.

Here in this paper, necklace-shaped Au-Ag nanoalloys (NAs) have been synthesized by a laser-based approach. A chain of Ag nanoparticles (NPs), which were joined together with Au junctions, was formed upon copper vapor laser (CVL) irradiation of a colloidal mixture of Ag and Au NPs; while the corresponding NPs were separately provided by laser ablation of gold and silver targets in deionized water by a 1064 nm Q-switched Nd:YAG laser. Dependence of the NAs development process on the CVL irradiation time in three distinct stages of as-mixed, nucleation and complete formation has been systematically studied by UV-vis optical absorption spectroscopy analysis as well as by transmission electron microscopy (TEM), which was exploited to visually confirm the NAs evolution through the process.