Studies on linear, nonlinear optical and excited state dynamics of silicon nanoparticles prepared by picosecond laser ablation

We report results from our studies on the fabrication and characterization of silicon (Si) nanoparticles (NPs) and nanostructures (NSs) achieved through the ablation of Si target in four different liquids using ∼2 picosecond (ps) pulses. The consequence of using different liquid media on the ablation of Si target was investigated by studying the surface morphology along with material composition of Si based NPs. The recorded mean sizes of these NPs were ∼9.5 nm, ∼37 nm, ∼45 nm and ∼42 nm obtained in acetone, water, dichloromethane (DCM) and chloroform, respectively. The generated NPs were characterized by selected area electron diffraction (SAED), high resolution transmission microscopy (HRTEM), Raman spectroscopic techniques and Photoluminescence (PL) studies. SAED, HRTEM and Raman spectroscopy data confirmed that the material composition was Si NPs in acetone, Si/SiO2 NPs in water, Si-C NPs in DCM and Si-C NPs in chloroform and all of them were confirmed to be polycrystalline in nature. Surface morphological information of the fabricated Si substrates was obtained using the field emission scanning electron microscopic (FESEM) technique. FESEM data revealed the formation of laser induced periodic surface structures (LIPSS) for the case of ablation in acetone and water while random NSs were observed for the case of ablation in DCM and chloroform. Femtosecond (fs) nonlinear optical properties and excited state dynamics of these colloidal Si NPs were investigated using the Z-scan and pump-probe techniques with ∼150 fs (100 MHz) and ∼70 fs (1 kHz) laser pulses, respectively. The fs pump-probe data obtained at 600 nm consisted of single and double exponential decays which were tentatively assigned to electron-electron collisional relaxation (<1 ps) and non-radiative transitions (>1 ps). Large third order optical nonlinearities (∼10−14 e.s.u.) for these colloids have been estimated from Z-scan data at an excitation wavelength of 680 nm suggesting that the colloidal Si NPs find potential applications in photonic devices.