Morphology studies on craters created by femtosecond laser irradiation in UDMA polymer targets embedded with plasmonic gold nanorods

Ágnes Nagyné Szokol; Judit Kámán; Roman Holomb; István Rigó; Márk Aladi; Miklós Kedves; Béla Ráczkevi; Péter Rácz; Attila Bonyár; Alexandra Borók; Shereen Zangana; Melinda Szalóki; István Papp; Gábor Galbács; Tamás S. Biró; László P. Csernai; Norbert Kroó; Miklós Veres

doi:10.1140/epjs/s11734-025-01599-8

2023 Impact factor 2.6

Special Topics

Open Access

Eur. Phys. J. Spec. Top.
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjs/s11734-025-01599-8

Regular Article

Morphology studies on craters created by femtosecond laser irradiation in UDMA polymer targets embedded with plasmonic gold nanorods

Ágnes Nagyné Szokol¹^,2^a, Judit Kámán¹, Roman Holomb¹, István Rigó¹, Márk Aladi¹, Miklós Kedves¹, Béla Ráczkevi¹, Péter Rácz¹, Attila Bonyár³, Alexandra Borók³, Shereen Zangana³, Melinda Szalóki⁴, István Papp¹, Gábor Galbács⁵, Tamás S. Biró¹^,6^,7, László P. Csernai¹^,8^,9, Norbert Kroó¹^,10, Miklós Veres¹ and NAPLIFE Collaboration

¹ HUN-REN Wigner Research Centre for Physics, 1121, Budapest, Hungary
² University of Pécs, Pecs, Hungary
³ Department of Electronics Technology, Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Informatics, Budapest University of Technology and Economics, 1111, Budapest, Hungary
⁴ Department of Biomaterials and Prosthetic Dentistry, Faculty of Dentistry, University of Debrecen, 4032, Debrecen, Hungary
⁵ Department of Inorganic and Analytical Chemistry, University of Szeged, 6720, Szeged, Hungary
⁶ Institute for Physics, Babeş Bolyai University, 3400, Cluj-Napoca, Romania
⁷ Complexity Science Hub, 1080, Vienna, Austria
⁸ Department of Physics and Technology, Bergen University, 5020, Bergen, Norway
⁹ Csernai Consult, 5119, Bergen, Norway
¹⁰ Hungarian Academy of Sciences, 1051, Budapest, Hungary

^a szokol.agnes@wigner.hun-ren.hu

Received: 19 December 2024
Accepted: 13 March 2025
Published online: 3 April 2025

Abstract

The effect of embedded plasmonic gold nanoparticles on the crater morphology was studied in 160 µm-thick UDMA–TEGDMA copolymer films irradiated by femtosecond single pulses of a Ti:Sa laser. The plasmonic absorption of the embedded gold nanorods had a resonance at the wavelength of the laser. It was observed that by increasing the laser intensity the diameter of the craters decreased, while the depth of the craters increased. In addition, the crater depths were significantly higher in the presence of gold nanorods. A threshold intensity of 1.5·10¹⁷ W/cm² has been determined, above which a doubled roughness and sevenfold increased crater volume was observed in the polymer containing gold nanorods.

© The Author(s) 2025

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