title: Synthesis of crystalline and amorphous, particle-agglomerated 3-D nanostructures of Al and Si oxides by femtosecond laser and the prediction of these particle sizes.
abstract: We report a single step technique of synthesizing particle-agglomerated, amorphous 3-D nanostructures of Al and Si oxides on powder-fused aluminosilicate ceramic plates and a simple novel method of wafer-foil ablation to fabricate crystalline nanostructures of Al and Si oxides at ambient conditions. We also propose a particle size prediction mechanism to regulate the size of vapor-condensed agglomerated nanoparticles in these structures. Size characterization studies performed on the agglomerated nanoparticles of fabricated 3-D structures showed that the size distributions vary with the fluence-to-threshold ratio. The variation in laser parameters leads to varying plume temperature, pressure, amount of supersaturation, nucleation rate, and the growth rate of particles in the plume. The novel wafer-foil ablation technique could promote the possibilities of fabricating oxide nanostructures with varying Al/Si ratio, and the crystallinity of these structures enhances possible applications. The fabricated nanostructures of Al and Si oxides could have great potentials to be used in the fabrication of low power-consuming complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor circuits and in Mn catalysts to enhance the efficiency of oxidation on ethylbenzene to acetophenone in the super-critical carbon dioxide.
authors.affiliation: Department of Aerospace Engineering, Ryerson University, 350 Victoria Street, Toronto, Ontario, M5B 2K3, Canada. tanbo@ryerson.ca.
authors.forename: Mugunthan
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Sivayoganathan
authors.forename: Bo
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Tan
authors.forename: Krishnan
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Venkatakrishnan