Morphological study of depth-controlled high quality holes and lines fabricated on a metal substrate with a thin metal film by picosecond laser pulses

Abstract

Laser micromachining is a convenient technique to structure and/or functionalize the surfaces of various materials. The use of ultrashort laser pulses has an obvious advantage to minimize the heat effect, which results in the formation of a hole without rims. Nevertheless, it is still difficult to fabricate a line without rims even with ultrashort laser pulses, because multiple irradiation of ultrashort laser pulses with a sufficient spatial overlap promotes the formation of rims and undesired structures. In this work we employ a metal substrate with a thin metal film, and demonstrate the fabrication of depth-controlled high quality lines, not to mention holes, through the selective removal of the film by picosecond laser pulses without forming rims and undesired structures. Morphological study of the target surface reveals that the fabricated structures have unprecedentedly flat bottoms with nearly vertical sidewalls to the surface.