IEEE Study: Optical Cavities Can Steer Laser Dewetting of Gold Films
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PISCATAWAY – November 02, 2026 -- Researchers report that the optical structure beneath a 10 nm gold film changes how laser-induced dewetting unfolds, offering a new lever for controlling nanostructure formation in metallic thin films, according to a study in IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Quantum Electronics.
Two of four substrates produced previously unreported dewetting features
The team fabricated four samples with identical chemical compositions but different optical structures, varying the thickness of the underlying silica and gold layers. Two samples showed the expected solid-state dewetting behavior. The other two exhibited broad nano- and micron-scale particle size distributions and complex spatial patterns not reported before.