Pulsed laser ablation in liquid for micro-/nanostructure generation

Pulsed laser ablation in liquid is an approach for micro-/nanostructure generation directly from bulk materials. It has grown rapidly as a research field of photochemistry and physical chemistry in the last decade, and represents a combinatorial library of constituents and interactions, but the understanding of this library is still insufficient. This review attempts to build up a comprehensive mechanistic scenario of pulsed laser ablation in liquid and illustrate the underlying principles to micro-/nanostructure generation. Various structures produced by this method have been summarized that provide prototypes for potential applications in sensing, optoelectronics, and biomedicine, etc. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.