Granulated metal nanostructure deposited by laser ablation accompanied by cascade drop fission

A new method is proposed for the fabrication of thin films consisting of closely packed nm-size metallic grains. The method is based on laser ablation of metallic (Cu) target and cascade fission of ejected liquid metallic drops charged in the laser torch plasma. It is suggested that cascade fission is limited by field emission current from the drop surface, which stops this process sharply when the Cu granule size diminishes down to about 10 nm. The fabricated films, free oxidized in air, are shown to consist of one or several layers of monodisperse spherical Cu grains, 8 nm in diameter, covered by about a 1 nm thick Cu2O layer.