Jumping nanodroplets: a new route towards metallic nano-particles

The dewetting process, which appears upon laser-induced melting of flat nanostructures and leads to a jumping of the droplets off the surface, is used for deposition of nano-particles onto a second substrate. Limitations in materials and particle sizes are discussed and experimentally verified. The experiments show that a variety of metals can be deposited in a size ranging from tens up to several hundreds of nanometers.