Light-controlled growth of gallium nanoparticles

Optical excitation of covalent bond structures via plasmon-mediated local fields inside elemental gallium nanoparticles can explain the recently observed phenomenon of light-controlled gallium nanoparticle growth on silica substrates under very low intensity laser illumination. Alongside the previously reported mechanism of atomic desorption induced by electronic excitation, we introduce another parallel mechanism based on the suppression of adatom adsorption, and illustrate how both mechanisms lead to a narrowing of the size distribution of the particle during the growth process. (C) 2003 American Institute of Physics.