Microstructures and their properties induced by femtosecond vector beams on a SiC surface

Abstract

Femtosecond laser with different polarizations can induce different types of periodic structures in fabrication of metal, semiconductor and dielectric materials. Most previous works reported that direction of the laser induced periodic surface structure (LIPSS) is perpendicular to the polarization direction of the laser. Polarization state of the vectoral polarized beam exerts an axisymmetric distribution in the beam cross-section. Over the years, femtosecond laser fabrication based on vectoral beams is attracting more and more attentions, which indicates novel properties and applications for induction of microstructures on surface. In this work . we used vortex wave plate to convert linearly polarized light into first-order and second-order vector beams respectively. We produced various types of LIPSS by single-point ablation on the SiC surface and analyzed period of the LIPSS by Fourier transform. In addition, we also analyzed variations of the LIPSS at different scanning speeds on the SiC surface.