Laser-induced silver nanojoining of gold nanoparticles.

Gold nanoparticles have been silver-joined to fabricate nanowires by irradiating gold nanospheres of 25 nm in diameter and silver nanospheres of 8 nm in diameter held together on a carbon-coated copper grid with a 30 ps laser pulse of 532 nm for 20 min at a fluence of 3.0 mJ/cm2. Laser-induced nanojoining of silver nanoparticles as well as that of gold nanoparticles has also been carried out by varying the wavelength and fluence of irradiation laser pulses. Irradiation at an optimum condition of laser fluence is essential for the proper silver nanojoining of gold nanospheres to produce gold@silver core-shell composite nanowires. The excitation of the surface plasmon resonances of the base-metallic gold nanospheres rather than the filler-metallic silver nanospheres paves the way for the silver nanojoining of gold nanoparticles.