Effect of liquid media and laser energy on the preparation of Ag nanoparticles and their nanocomposites with Au nanoparticles via laser ablation for optoelectronic applications

The nanostructured materials from Ag and Au@Ag core/shell bimetallic were synthesized by pulsed infrared laser ablation process in different liquid media technique in just one-pot step. By varying the surrounding media by metallic precursor solution and the laser energy, the monometallic nanoparticles were changed to bimetallic nanocomposites in a form of core/shell structure with tuning their shell thickness. The prepared nanostructured materials were examined by different spectroscopic techniques to inform their physicochemical properties. The characterization techniques proved that the crystallinity of prepared samples. Besides, the bimetallic nanocomposite structure has a core/shell form with Au in the core and Ag in shell. Also, as the laser intensity raises, the Ag-shell’s thickness grows, and the core/shell diameter increases, which was affected in their linear and nonlinear optical properties. Their linear properties were investigated depended on Mie theory. Besides, the nonlinear optical parameters were determined by Z-scan technique, which demonstrated that the nonlinear optical properties of a shell can be tuned depending on their thickness. The prepared core/shell nanocomposites with different particle sizes confirmed the capability for possible application in optoelectronic applications as good optical limiting materials. •Ag@Au core/shell was successfully synthesized by PLAL technique of Ag plate in chloroauric acid.•The nanocomposites materials were prepared in just one step.•The effect of laser energies and surrounding medium during PLAL was studied.•The as-prepared nanocomposites have good nonlinear optical properties.•The third order nonlinearity was calculated.