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Discussion of the possible formation mechanism of near-wavelength ripples on silicon induced by femtosecond laser

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Abstract

In this paper, the effect of the irradiation pulse number on the morphology of the near-wavelength ripples perpendicular to the laser polarization was investigated. The results show that the ripple spacing first fast decreases with the increased irradiation pulse number and finally reaches a stable value. The change of ripple morphology with different incidence angles was also studied. The ripples are found keeping always perpendicular to the laser polarization and have respective ripple spacings of 650, 480 and 390 nm upon the laser irradiation with pulse number N = 16 and fluence of 1.33 J/cm2 at the incidence angles of 0°, 30° and 60°. The change of the ripple spacing with different excitation levels was also studied. The theory for interference of the incident wave with the surface plasmon polariton wave (SPP) and the Sipe–Drude theory are both employed to analyze the experimental results. Detailed calculations show that the Sipe–Drude theory works better for explaining the main features of the ripples on silicon wafer surface. We suggest that the interaction of the incident wave with some form of surface electromagnetic wave except SPP is most possibly responsible for the ripple formation on silicon surface.

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Acknowledgments

The authors greatly appreciate the laser ablation experimental contributions from Junyi Ye. Thanks for the experimental conditions provided by the laboratory of ultrafast photonics of Shanghai University. Thanks for the AFM characterization help from Yan Jiang. Thanks for the financial support from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 61205128, 60908007, 11102075 and 51302111), the Research Foundation for Advanced Talents of Jiangsu University (No. 09JDG022) and Shanghai Municipal Natural Science Foundation (No. 13ZR1414800).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Material Science and Engineering, Jiangsu University, No. 301 Xuefu Road, Zhenjiang, 212013, China

    Juan Song, Haohua Li & Yan Jiang

  2. Physics Department, Shanghai University, Shanghai, 200444, China

    Junyi Ye, Xian Lin, Ye Dai & Guohong Ma

  3. Key Laboratory of Specially Functional Materials of Ministry of Education and Institute of Optical Communication Materials, South China University of Technology, Guangzhou, 510640, Guangdong, China

    Jianrong Qiu

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  1. Juan Song
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  2. Junyi Ye
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  3. Xian Lin
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  4. Ye Dai
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  5. Guohong Ma
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  6. Haohua Li
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  7. Yan Jiang
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Correspondence to Juan Song.

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Song, J., Ye, J., Lin, X. et al. Discussion of the possible formation mechanism of near-wavelength ripples on silicon induced by femtosecond laser. Appl. Phys. A 118, 1119–1125 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00339-014-8926-x

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00339-014-8926-x

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