Towards nanostructuring with femtosecond laser pulses

Micro- and nanostructuring are very important for the fabrication of new materials and multifunctional devices. Existing photo-lithographic technologies can only be applied to a limited number of materials and used on plane surfaces. Whereas, microstructuring with femtosecond laser pulses has established itself as an excellent and universal tool for micro-processing, it is still unclear what are the limits of this technology. It is of great interest to use this technique also for nanostructuring. With tightly focused femtosecond laser pulses one can produce sub-micrometer holes and structures whose quality depends on the material. We present new results on nanostructuring of different materials with femtosecond laser pulses in an attempt to make this an universal technology, and discuss its reproducibility, and further prospects for quality control.