Acta Photonica Sinica, Volume. 52, Issue 7, 0752304(2023)

Study on Polarization Dependence of Ultrafast Combination Pulse Ablation on Silicon Surface(Invited)

Huiqiang SHI1, Qian YAO1, Weiyi YIN1, Zihuai SU1, Jiang YU1, Juan SONG2, Xian LIN1, and Ye DAI1、*
Author Affiliations
  • 1Department of Physics,Shanghai University,Shanghai 200444,China
  • 2School of Material Science and Engineering,Jiangsu University,Zhenjiang 212013,China
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    Since the invention of the laser, a great deal of research has focused on the mechanisms of laser-silicon interactions. Although ultrafast laser processing of Laser Induced Periodic Surface Structures (LIPSS) structures on silicon surfaces has been carried out for a long time, there are still problems, such as low processing efficiency in the preparation of large-area structures. The use of double pulse sequences has therefore been tried to improve the quality and efficiency of the process and has proved to be an effective strategy. A new method was provided for enhanced energy deposition by irradiating a ZnO surface with a Fs+Ps Double-Pulse Sequence (FPDPS) with a combined pulse width of 120 fs+2 ps and a sub-pulse energy ratio of 1∶1. On this basis, we investigate the nonlinear ionization dynamics causing the evolution of periodic structures by studying the effect of polarization angle, delay time and number of pulses between the double pulses on the area of the periodic structure, using an ultrafast combination double pulse with a repetition frequency of 1 kHz as an excitation tool on a silicon wafer with a crystalline surface of <100>. The experimental results show that under the combined pulse irradiation condition with a laser energy density of 0.23 J/cm2 and pulse combination of 100 pulses, there is a“V”shaped variation pattern at all delays within ±50 ps. The structure area induced by orthogonal polarization is the smallest, and the maximum area reduction rate is about 45% compared to that induced by other incident forms. This is due to the repeated modulation of the local field suppressing the reduction of the periodic structural edge ablation threshold. Specifically, the first pulse forms a LIPSS structure at the center and produces a local field modulated by polarization. When the two pulses are polarized in the same direction, subsequent pulses will gradually strengthen the initial local field, forming an elliptical distribution of stable local field strengths, which will effectively promote the growth of the LIPSS structure through a positive feedback mechanism. However, when the two pulses are polarized in different directions, the arrival of the second pulse will form a new local field and re-modulate the local field formed by the previous pulse, which will result in some energy dissipation and a reduction in the overall local field intensity, but the local field intensity at the center of the irradiation is theoretically almost unaffected, forming a circular local field intensity distribution when polarized orthogonally. Because the transient local field enhancement effect produced by laser irradiation promotes a lowering of the material ablation threshold, repeated changes in the local field not only inhibit the effect of the positive feedback mechanism, but also inhibit the effect of the local field enhancement in promoting a lowering of the ablation threshold. This effect is concentrated at the edges of the laser irradiated region, so we believe that the area of the LIPSS structure decreases with increasing polarization angle because the repeated changes in the local field suppress the reduction of the ablation threshold at the edge part of the LIPSS structure. At orthogonal polarization, the electron ionization to matter ejection can be characterized by observing the change in the area of the induced structure as the varied pulse delay times. According to the above theory, we designed experiments to test it. We used a 50× objective (NA=0.55) at a delay time of 2 ps. At an energy density of 0.19 J/cm2, differences in parallel and orthogonally polarized LIPSS morphology are observed, which is consistent with our theoretical interpretation. This combination pulse modulation technique provides a way for studying the polarization dependence and electron ionization efficiency of ultrafast laser-induced periodic structures on semiconductor surfaces, and further improvements are expected to enable the rapid fabrication of super-diffractive limit structures.

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    Huiqiang SHI, Qian YAO, Weiyi YIN, Zihuai SU, Jiang YU, Juan SONG, Xian LIN, Ye DAI. Study on Polarization Dependence of Ultrafast Combination Pulse Ablation on Silicon Surface(Invited)[J]. Acta Photonica Sinica, 2023, 52(7): 0752304

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    Paper Information

    Category:

    Received: Mar. 29, 2023

    Accepted: May. 15, 2023

    Published Online: Sep. 26, 2023

    The Author Email: DAI Ye (yedai@shu.edu.cn)

    DOI:10.3788/gzxb20235207.0752304

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