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Abstract

Photothermal reactions of metallic nanostructures, such as gold nanorods show appealing structural relaxations, such as bubble formation or particle modification. We have employed a pump-probe method to record the structural relaxations of a suspension of gold nanorods upon femtosecond laser excitation by pulsed X-ray scattering both with wide-angle and small-angle sensitivity. Single-pulse reactions include transient bubble formation at 20 J m(-2) and irreversible nanorod reshaping at 30 J m(-2). Thus the window for reversible excitation is very narrow. Additionally we could map the time-domain and fluence behaviour in a wide range to characterize the relaxations comprehensively. The polarized laser pulse first selectively excites nanorods aligned with the laser electric field, but at higher fluence non-aligned rods are also transformed. At low fluence this transformation happens in the solid state, while at higher fluence the rods melt.