The effect of thermionic electron emission on the formation of amorphous metallic nanoparticles in a laser-jet plasma

In recent years, the interest in using the structures consisting of amorphous nanoparticles has increased significantly due to their peculiar electric, magnetic, and catalytic properties. One important problem in the practical application of such particles is the development of new technologies for their formation. The studies aimed at the solution of this problem reveal that fragmentation of microdroplets of metals charged in a laser jet plasma is the most effective method for obtaining of amorphous metallic nanoparticles. However, in spite of the fact that the application of this method has made it possible to obtain such structures from various types of metals, the theoretical analysis of microdroplet fragmentation effect has been performed without detailed investigation of nanodroplet charging, which limits to a considerable extent the use of available theoretical models for developing new technologies. We propose a model that makes it possible to formulate more exactly the requirements for the parameters of laser jet plasma, for which effective fragmentation of microdroplets of metals to a nanometer size is realized.