Effect of the liquid media and laser energy during the ablation of Ag plate for changing the optical properties of the produced Ag nanoparticles and their nanocomposites with Au nanoparticles for optoelectronic applications

Abstract Ag nanoparticles and Au@Ag core/shell bimetallic nanocomposites were synthesized by pulsed laser ablation in liquid media technique in just one-pot step. By varying the surrounding media by metallic precursor solution and the laser energy, the monometallic nanoparticles were changed to bimetallic nanocomposites in a form of core/shell structure with tuning their shell thickness. The prepared nanostructured materials were characterized by UV-visible spectroscopy, transmission electron microscope, and X-ray diffraction to inform their physicochemical properties. The characterization techniques showed that the crystallinity of prepared samples. Besides, the bimetallic nanocomposite structure has a core/shell structure with Au in the core and Ag in Shell. Also, as the laser energy increases, the thickness of the Ag-shell increases, and the core/shell diameter increases, which was affected in their linear and nonlinear optical properties. The linear properties of the prepared samples were investigated depended on Mie theory. Besides, the nonlinear optical parameters were determined by the open/close aperture Z-scan technique (Nd:YAG, 532 nm), which demonstrated that the nonlinear optical properties of a shell can be tuned depending on their thickness. The prepared core/shell nanocomposites with different particle sizes confirmed the capability for possible application in optoelectronic applications as good optical limiting materials.