Concentration dependent thermo-optical properties and nonlinear optical switching behavior of bimetallic Au-Ag nanoparticles synthesized by femtosecond laser ablation

Abstract Concentration, morphology and composition-dependent thermal diffusivity changes occurring in bimetallic Au-Ag nanoparticles synthesized by femtosecond laser ablation were investigated using a dual- beam mode matched thermal lens technique. The synthesis utilized the variation in ablation time of silver plate kept immersed in already synthesized gold nanoparticle seeds. Thermal diffusivity values were found to increase both with an increase in concentration of the samples as well as an increase in Ag/Au weight percentage ratio. Au-Ag core–shell and nanoalloy structure show much greater variation in the thermal diffusivity compared to the other samples. A possible explanation could be the modified surface state density of the bimetallic nanoparticles. A single beam z scan technique using an Nd:YAG laser operating at a wavelength of 532 nm was employed for the nonlinear optical characterization of the samples. At a fixed laser input fluence, a switching behavior from saturable absorption (SA) to reverse saturable absorption (RSA) was observed as the ablation time of the silver plate in gold nanoparticle solution increased. The effect of laser input fluence on nonlinear optical properties of core–shell and nanoalloy structures was also studied and the optical limiting threshold of nanoalloy was calculated. The results revealed an increase in the nonlinear absorption coefficient with an increase in input fluence. A linear variation of the limiting threshold was also observed with an increase in input fluence. Thermal diffusivity studies find applications in photo thermal therapies and optical limiting properties find application in optoelectronic switches.