Nanoscale Laser Processing of Hollow Silica Microbeads Assisted by Surface Plasmon Resonance of Gold Particles

Irradiation with a nanosecond pulse laser (λ = 532 nm) was performed on spherical hollow silica particles modified with gold nanoparticles to photoexcite the localized surface plasmon resonance, resulting in the formation of pores on the shell wall accompanied with the fragmentation of the original Au particles to much smaller ones. The size of pores was tunable from 17 to 56 nm by varying the size of original Au particles on SiO2 shell from 6 to 39 nm.