Production of Hydrogen-Capped Polyynes by Laser Ablation of Graphite in Neat Water

Abstract

. Although larger polyynes can be formed in organic sol-vents, laser ablation in water has a unique advantage in that it can greatly reduce the contaminant carbon materials including graphite and graphite-like carbon particulates (in short, carbon contaminants hereafter) compared to the organic solvents. The key feature of laser ablation of a solid target in liquid phase is certainly the formation of a dense plasma which gen-erates local and temporal non-equilibrium conditions. There-fore, physical parameters including laser fluence, wavelength, and ablation time as well as chemical parameters including solvent undoubtedly determine the characteristics of the resul-tant polyynes significantly. In this Note, we discuss the effects of aging and post-irradiation on the polyyne solution, together with the influence of laser fluence on the formation rate and size of polyynes.