Sub-micron ablation of metallic thin film by femtosecond pulse laser

The ability to machine very small features in a material has a wide range of applications in industry. We ablated holes into thin film of 100 nm thickness made from various metals by femtosecond pulsed laser ablation. Using a Ti:Sapphire laser which supplies a laser pulse of 150 fs duration at central spectrum wavelength of 400 nm, we have produced a series sub-micron holes, whose diameters are less than 200 nm with a focused laser spot of 1.7 mum. We found that the material damage threshold has a great influence on the quality of the produced features. Experimental results shows that the heat-affected zone and the degree of being affected reduce with the increase of threshold value. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.