Thermal Stability and Hot Carrier Dynamics of Gold Nanoparticles of Different Shapes

Anisotropic shapes of gold nanoparticles are prepared using a modified seed method in the presence of silver ions or clusters in order to study the thermal stability and the dynamics of the hot carriers induced by femtosecond laser pulses. Although gold nanospheres are stable towards thermal treatment, the decomposition of the gold nanorods into spherical nanoparticle aggregates upon thermal treatment is mechanistically different from the case of nanoprisms. Great enhancement of thermal stability is achieved by modifying the surface of the nanoparticles by adding specific amounts of polyvinyl pyrrolidone (PVP) after preparation of gold particles of different shapes capped with cetyltrimethylammonium bromide (CTAB). The surface plasmon resonance spectra of the gold nanostructures are used to monitor their morphological changes. In regards to the hot carrier dynamics, it is found that the phonon-phonon (ph-ph) coupling is much slower in dots than in rods and prisms while electron-phonon (e-ph) coupling is almost the same in these particles.