Nano ultrasonic measurements of nanoparticles

Metallic nanoparticles have been widely used for the last two decades as their optical properties can be exploited in fields such as physics, medicine and biology. The scattering and absorption properties of these devices are dependent on the material, the surrounding media and the size. The latter is crucial for many applications and a reliable measurement is a must. However, the current applications have some limitations such as they are destructive, cannot provide the size of individual particles or they use high vacuums. In this paper, we propose the use of an optical microscope which allows the measurement of multiple metallic nanoparticles non-destructively providing the size of each single particle.