Abstract

This work presents results on laser processing of Au doped thin films and bulk dielectric materials. Using pulsed laser deposition technique SiO₂/Au and Al₂O₃/Au thin films are deposited. The rotating target used for deposition is composed by two sectors that consist the oxide material and gold. By changing the area of the sectors films with different presence of gold are obtained. The bulk material is Au⁺ doped soda lime glass obtained by conventional melt quenching method. The deposited films and gold doped glass samples are then irradiated by laser pulses with a wide variety of parameters – wavelength, fluence, pulse duration, number of pulses. The optical properties of the processed areas are studied on the basis of their transmission spectra. It is shown that at certain processing conditions laser irradiation induces clear coloring and dip in the transmission spectra of the initially transparent materials. The performed analyses based on TEM, SEM, XRD, and EDX, show that this effect is related to formation and dynamics of gold nanoparticles caused by the laser pulses interaction. The influence of the processing condition on the characteristics of the formed particles and the mechanism of their formation are discussed. It is demonstrated fabrication of 2- and 3D nanoparticles systems (Fig. 1) that can be applied in the design of new optical materials and in plasmonics.

© 2015 Japan Society of Applied Physics, Optical Society of America