Laser sputtering of highly oriented pyrolytic graphite at 248 nm

Abstract

The interaction of excimer laser pulses with a highly oriented pyrolytic graphite (HOPG) target has been studied. HOPG, a close approximation to single crystal graphite, was irradiated along a freshly cleaved basal plane in vacuum by pulses from a KrF excimer laser. The energy fluence was varied between 300–700 mJ/cm2, resulting in material removal rates of <0.01 Å/pulse to ∼100 Å/pulse. In this near-threshold regime, neutral carbon atoms, dimers, and trimers account for nearly all of the sputtered flux and collisional and plasma effects are minimized. Time-of-flight distributions of the neutral carbon atoms and small carbon clusters were measured and inverted to obtain translational energy flux distributions and relative sputtering yields as a function of fluence. The translational energy distributions are remarkably close to Maxwell–Boltzmann distributions over most of the fluence range studied. However, the mean translational energies are far too high to reconcile with a simple thermal vaporization model. For example, the mean translational energy of C3, the most abundant species, increases from 1.1 eV at 305 mJ/cm2 to 31.7 eV at 715 mJ/cm2. Explanations are considered for this curious mix of thermal and non-thermal behavior. At the high end of our fluence range, the mean translational energies of C1, C2, C3 converge to a 1:2:3 ratio, indicating that the velocity distributions are almost identical. This particular result can be interpreted as a gas dynamic effect. Prolonged sputtering of the same target spot results in a falloff in the sputtering yield and the mean translational energies, but little change in the cluster size distribution. These effects are related to impurity induced topography formation on the target surface.