Nanofractal structure consisting of nanoparticles produced by ultrashort laser pulses.

By irradiating subpicosecond laser onto an iron plate, a nanofibrous structure consisting of iron nanoparticles with diameters less than 12 nm was produced. The nanofibrous structure was found to be three-dimensional fractal, and its fractal dimension measured from field-emission scanning electron microscopy images conserved the same fractal dimension of 1.73 in the wide-scale range from 30 nm to 60 μm, and the smallest fractal structure was less than 10 nm. The growth of this fractal is related to the cluster-cluster aggregation model, and it suggests that the fractal structure grew by the attachment of clusters consisting of nanoparticles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]