A Surface Phase Transition of Supported Gold Nanoparticles

Abstract

A thermal phase transition has been resolved in gold nanoparticles supported on a surface. By use of asynchronous optical sampling with coupled femtosecond oscillators, the Lamb vibrational modes could be resolved as a function of annealing temperature. At a temperature of 104°C the damping rate and phase changes abruptly, indicating a structural transition in the particle, which is explained as the onset of surface melting.Metallic nanoparticles are in the focus of fundamental and applied research. They show an optical response in the visible region that depends strongly on size, shape, and local dielectric environment, 1 making them appealing for nanoscale sensor applications. The interaction with light shows interesting peculiarities, such as ultrafast relaxation dynamics, coupling to nonradiative processes, or near field enhancement. 2 In particular nanoscale gold particles have received strong attention due to their versatile synthesis protocols, 3 shape transformations, or binding to biological molecules. 4 They served also to understand the generic structural properties that scale with size or shape. The melting point depression with decreasing particle size represents one of the prominent features, arising from the change in ratio between surface and bulk atoms and the reduction in binding energy. Since the seminal publication of Buffat and Borel 5 several improvements of the description have been made, while the general relation of the melting point depression ∆T mp ∝ 1/D as a function of size D remains valid. One of these points is the existence of surface melting, i.e., a coexistence of a liquid-like layer of atoms at the surface with the solid core material at temperatures below the respective melting point. 6,7 While this effect seems to be very basic, there is still a lack of unambiguous experimental proof regarding the details, in particular for gold nanoparticles.Inasawa et al. 8 have tried to investigate the shape transformation of elongated particles on a surface induced by static heating (ex situ) and concluded that a transformation into spheres takes places at temperatures as low as 400°C. A similar, very recent study has shown that nanorods with a large aspect ratio of the axes can be transformed at 200°C into spheres and partial relaxation occurs much earlier (100°C). 9 Surface melting is taken as the origin for these relaxations.It should also be borne in mind that the relaxation of rods could also be caused by other forces, as has been shown by laser-induced melting, 10 where the onset correlates with dislocations in the interior, as the rods are subjected to a large uniaxial strain due to surface tension.Hartland et al. have also reported on several experiments, which aimed at the structural transformations on a very short time scale, initiated by femtosecond excitation. 11,12 The vibrational response of the particles has been recorded by optical pump-probe techniques, reflecting the mechanical properties of the particles. While the change of the elastic constants of the spheres ...

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