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Damping of acoustic vibrations in gold nanoparticles

Nature Nanotechnology volume 4, pages 492–495 (2009)Cite this article

Abstract

Studies of acoustic vibrations in nanometre-scale particles can provide fundamental insights into the mechanical properties of materials because it is possible to precisely characterize and control the crystallinity and geometry of such nanostructures1,2,3,4. Metal nanoparticles are of particular interest because they allow the use of ultrafast laser pulses to generate and probe high-frequency acoustic vibrations, which have the potential to be used in a variety of sensing applications. So far, the decay of these vibrations has been dominated by dephasing due to variations in nanoparticle size5. Such inhomogeneities can be eliminated by performing measurements on single nanoparticles deposited on a substrate6,7,8,9, but unknown interactions between the nanoparticles and the substrate make it difficult to interpret the results of such experiments. Here, we show that the effects of inhomogeneous damping can be reduced by using bipyramidal gold nanoparticles with highly uniform sizes10. The inferred homogeneous damping is due to the combination of damping intrinsic to the nanoparticles and the surrounding solvent; the latter is quantitatively described by a parameter-free model.

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Figure 1: Chemically synthesized bipyramidal gold nanoparticles.
Figure 2: Transient spectroscopy of gold nanoparticles.
Figure 3: Simulation of acoustic vibrations in gold nanoparticles.

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Acknowledgements

Work at the Center for Nanoscale Materials was supported by the US Department of Energy (contract no. DE-AC02-06CH11357). J.B. was fully supported and M.Z.L. was partially supported by the US National Science Foundation (grant no. CHE-0718718). J.E.S. acknowledges support from the Australian Research Council Grants Scheme.

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Author notes

  1. Julien Burgin & Mingzhao Liu

    Present address: Present address: ICMCB, CNRS and Université de Bordeaux, 87, Avenue du Docteur Albert Schweitzer, 33608 PESSAC, France (J.B.); Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02143, USA (M.L.),

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Center for Nanoscale Materials, Argonne National Laboratory, Argonne, 60439, Illinois, USA

    Matthew Pelton, Mingzhao Liu & David Gosztola

  2. Department of Mathematics and Statistics, The University of Melbourne, Victoria, 3010, Australia

    John E. Sader

  3. James Franck Institute, The University of Chicago, Chicago, 60637, Illinois, USA

    Julien Burgin, Mingzhao Liu & Philippe Guyot-Sionnest

Authors
  1. Matthew Pelton
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  2. John E. Sader
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  3. Julien Burgin
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  4. Mingzhao Liu
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  5. Philippe Guyot-Sionnest
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Contributions

M.P. designed the research project, carried out the transient-absorption measurements, analysed the data and wrote the paper. J.E.S. developed the analytical model for fluid damping of nanoparticle vibrations and analysed the experimental results. J.B. carried out the finite-element modelling and contributed to data analysis. M.L. and J.B. synthesized the gold bipyramids and prepared the samples. P.G.S. contributed to project design and the understanding of the experimental results, and D.G. contributed to the transient-absorption measurement capabilities. All authors discussed the results and contributed to writing of the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Matthew Pelton.

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Pelton, M., Sader, J., Burgin, J. et al. Damping of acoustic vibrations in gold nanoparticles. Nature Nanotech 4, 492–495 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1038/nnano.2009.192

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