"Photocatalytic few atoms Ag nanoclusters produced by ultrashort light pulses"

SANTILLÁN, JESICA MARÍA JOSÉ; SCAFFARDI, LUCÍA BEATRÍZ; MUÑETÓN ARBOLEDA, DAVID; SCHINCA, DANIEL CARLOS; MURACA, DIEGO

Zürich

Encuentro; PHOTONICS ONLINE MEETUP (POM); 2020

ETH Zürich

Metal clusters have chemical and physical properties that dependent only on the number of atoms they contain. These size-dependent properties, which make them suitable for applications in catalysis, photoluminescence and biomedicine, among others, show significant deviations from their bulk and large nanoparticles (NPs) counterparts. Therefore metal clusters may be considered as new materials covering the intermediate stage between single atoms/molecules and bulk materials.For potential catalysis application, it is important to produce small and very small clusters, since they seem to be the most active catalyst sites. Reactivity is highly dependent on their electronic structure, leading to large variations even for sizes differing by only single atoms. In particular, Ag nanoclusters (NCs) are known to catalyse a wide range of reactions.In this work we analysed and synthesized few atoms Ag NCs by ultrashort pulse laser ablation. However, these few atoms NCs coexist with small Ag NPs (