Pulsed laser ablation of a continuously-fed wire in liquid flow for high-yield production of silver nanoparticles

Increasing nanoparticle productivity is a prominent topic in the field of laser ablation in liquid. Although it has been demonstrated that it is possible to reach the gram-scale range, still a large portion of the laser pulse energy is not harvested for nanoparticle production. Hence, for industrial application the ablation efficiency may be further increased and ideally, the process should be transformed into a continuous process to benefit from steady-state conditions. Changing the target geometry is a promising, non-cost-effective approach,and it has been shown that ablation of a metal wire in air can heavily increase the productivity of nanoparticles compared to conventional techniques using bulk targets. The quantitative ablation of a thin, heat-confining, continuously- fed wire enables efficient and continuous nanoparticle fabrication. This work presents the first example of pulsed laser ablation of a silver wire in liquid flow.