Melting, Bubblelike Expansion, and Explosion of Superheated Plasmonic Nanoparticles

S Dold and T Reichenbach and A Colombo and J Jordan and I Barke and P Behrens and N Bernhardt and J Correa and S Düsterer and B Erk and T Fennel and L Hecht and A Heilrath and R Irsig and N Iwe and P Kolb and B Kruse and B Langbehn and B Manschwetus and P Marienhagen and F Martinez and KH Meiwes-Broer and K Oldenburg and C Passow and C Peltz and M Sauppe and F Seel and RMP Tanyag and R Treusch and A Ulmer and S Walz and M Moseler and T Möller and D Rupp and B von Issendorff, PHYSICAL REVIEW LETTERS, 134, 136101 (2025).

DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.134.136101

We report on time-resolved coherent diffraction imaging of gas-phase silver nanoparticles, strongly heated via their plasmon resonance. The x-ray diffraction images reveal a broad range of phenomena for different excitation strengths, from simple melting over strong cavitation to explosive disintegration. Molecular dynamics simulations fully reproduce this behavior and show that the heating induces rather similar trajectories through the phase diagram in all cases, with the very different outcomes resulting solely from whether and where the stability limit of the metastable superheated liquid is crossed.

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