Formation of silver microbelt structures by laser irradiation of silver nanoparticles in ethanol

Reza Zamiri1, Azmi Zakaria1,2, Mohd Shahril Husin1, Zaidan Abd Wahab1, Forough Kalaei Nazarpour3 1Department of Physics, Faculty of Science, 2Advanced Materials and Nanotechnology Laboratory, Institute of Advanced Technology, 3Institute of Bioscience, Universiti Putra Malaysia, Serdang, Selangor, Malaysia Abstract: In the present work, we prepared silver nanoparticles by laser ablation of pure silver plate in ethanol and then irradiated the silver nanoparticles using a 532 nm Q-switched Nd:YAG pulsed laser. Transmission electron microscopic images of the sample after irradiation clearly showed formation of big structures, such as microrods and microbelts in ethanol. The obtained microbelts had a width of about 0.166 µm and a length of 1.472 µm. The reason for the formation of such a big structure is the tendency of the nanoparticles to aggregate in ethanol before irradiation, which causes fusion of the nanoparticles. Keywords: nanomaterial, laser ablation, nanoparticles