Laser-induced structuring of nanoporous glass composites is promising for numerous emerging applications in photonics, plasmonics and medicine. In these laser interactions, an interplay of photo-thermo-chemical mechanisms is commonly activated and is extremely difficult to control. The choice of optimum laser parameters to tune the resulted optical properties remains extremely challenging. In this paper, we analyze the mechanisms involved and propose a way to control over not only structures formed by laser inside a nanoporous glass composites doped by metallic ions and nanocparticles, but also their plasmonic properties. For this, both experimental and numerical approaches are combined. The transmitted laser power is used to analyze the modification process. Spectral microanalysis provides plasmonic properties. Numerical effective medium modeling connects the measured data to the estimated size, concentration, and chemical composition of the secondary phase across the initial sample.
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