Confined laser ablation for single-shot nanoparticle deposition of silver

•Confined laser ablation is shown to be a novel laser ablation technique for single laser pulse synthesis of a nanoparticle film.•Deposition plasma exists at a density higher than that for conventional pulsed laser deposition of nanoparticle films.•The nanoparticle film surface morphology is shown to be dependent on laser fluence.•Nanofilms deposited using single shot confined laser ablation exhibit similar optical properties to those grown by standard PLD using >103 shots. Spatially confined laser ablation of silver was used to form long-lived dense plasma for single-shot deposition of a nanoparticle film. The expansion of the ablation plume was restricted by placing a glass substrate at 50μm from the silver target surface. Time-resolved optical emission spectroscopy showed that the confined plasma is sustained for longer time than for free ablation. A single laser shot is sufficient to produce a layer of silver nanoparticles on the substrate. In absorption the nanoparticle layer displays a surface plasmon resonance which is comparable to films made by conventional pulsed laser deposition in vacuum.