Melting, Bubblelike Expansion, and Explosion of Superheated Plasmonic Nanoparticles
We report on time-resolved coherent diffraction imaging of gas-phase silver nanoparticles, strongly heated via their plasmon resonance. The x-ray diffraction images reveal a broad range of phenomena for different excitation strengths, from simple melting over strong cavitation to explosive disintegration. Molecular dynamics simulations fully reproduce this behavior and show that the heating induces rather similar trajectories through the phase diagram in all cases, with the very different outcomes resulting solely from whether and where the stability limit of the metastable superheated liquid is crossed.
Authors
- Bruno Langbehn (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3245-8169)
- Patrice Kolb (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3946-7671)
- Thomas Möller (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0005-1400-6248)
- N. Iwe (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5911-5385)
- Mario Sauppe (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6312-3102)
- Jonathan Correa (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7336-6765)
- Patrick Behrens
- K.‐H. Meiwes‐Broer (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8516-0470)
- Bernd von Issendorff (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4358-4494)
- Franklin Martinez (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0902-6197)
- Nils Bernhardt (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9515-4373)
- S. Düsterer (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4379-1327)
- Saida Walz (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8192-4755)
- Bastian Manschwetus (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6165-9560)
- Kevin R. Oldenburg (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5916-673X)
- Christian Peltz (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2667-7488)
- Thomas Reichenbach (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7477-6248)
- Björn Kruse (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9150-1972)
- Christopher Passow (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0621-2026)
- Benjamin Erk (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8413-3588)
- Thomas Fennel (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4149-5164)
- Jakob Jordan (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6081-7595)
- Rico Mayro P. Tanyag (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2874-199X)
- Robert Irsig (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4998-8035)
- Andrea Heilrath (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1220-7004)
- R. Treusch (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8479-8862)
- Ingo Barke (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1717-570X)
- Daniela Rupp (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6504-7956)
- Anatoli Ulmer (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7864-3063)
- Linos Hecht (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3342-1218)
- Simon Dold (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5332-8251)
- Michael Moseler (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7064-1351)
- Fabian Seel (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8627-9967)
- Philipp Marienhagen (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6834-6700)
- Alessandro Colombo (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7950-293X)
Institutions
- University of Fribourg (CH)
- Universität Hamburg (DE)
- University of Freiburg (DE)
- Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron DESY (DE)
- ETH Zurich (CH)
- Fraunhofer Institute for Mechanics of Materials (DE)
- Max-Born-Institute for Nonlinear Optics and Short Pulse Spectroscopy (DE)
- Technische Universität Berlin (DE)
- University of Rostock (DE)
- European X-Ray Free-Electron Laser (DE)
Publication Details
- Journal
- Physical Review Letters
- Published
- 2025-04-03
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1103/physrevlett.134.136101
- Citations
- 5
- Primary Topic
- Laser-Ablation Synthesis of Nanoparticles
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 3.37
Funders
- Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft
- Schweizerischer Nationalfonds zur Förderung der Wissenschaftlichen Forschung
- Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung
- Max-Planck-Gesellschaft
- Gauss Centre for Supercomputing
- Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron
- Leibniz-Gemeinschaft