Laser-Driven Silver Nanowire Formation: Effect of Femtosecond Laser Pulse Polarization

We report our laser-driven method used to make large quantities of straight thin silver nanowires, and experimentally demonstrate that femtosecond laser pulse polarization has a prominent effect on formation of non-spherical shapes of nanoscale particles. Further, our experiment directly reveals that the underlying mechanism is plasmon-plasmon interaction, which can be controlled by polarization and plays a decisive role in this non-synthetic method for metal nanowire formation. (cross-disciplinary physics and related areas of science and technology)