laser ablation and nanoparticle generation in liquid flow

This animation shows a versatile setup for the fabrication of functional nanoparticle colloids. It consists of a pure water supply, a pulsed laser, a ligand (e.g., biomolecule) supply, and a product collection bottle. In detail, pulsed laser ablation of the wire in water caused a shockwave and cavitation bubble. After collapse of the bubble, nanoparticles that are free of any ligands start to condense in the time scale of milliseconds to seconds (and even slower) and grab up any electron donor (preferring soft donors like biomolecules or thiol-carrying ligands), building up gold nanoparticle bioconjugates or similar nanoparticle-ligand-conjugates.
In this way, fabrication of monovalent or bivalent nanoparticle bioconjugates is possible by subsequent addition of the biomolecules to the continuous gold nanoparticle source (with its origin from laser ablation of a wire).
------: The projekt is supported by Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (research see http://www.uni-due.de/barcikowski/for.... Animation by Martin Langhammer (   / frontsicht  )