Laser printed nano-gratings: Orientation and period peculiarities

Valdemar Stankevič*, Gediminas Račiukaitis, Francesca Bragheri, Xuewen Wang, Eugene G. Gamaly, Roberto Osellame, Saulius Juodkazis

*Corresponding author for this work

    Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

    33 Citations (Scopus)

    Abstract

    Understanding of material behaviour at nanoscale under intense laser excitation is becoming critical for future application of nanotechnologies. Nanograting formation by linearly polarised ultra-short laser pulses has been studied systematically in fused silica for various pulse energies at 3D laser printing/writing conditions, typically used for the industrial fabrication of optical elements. The period of the nanogratings revealed a dependence on the orientation of the scanning direction. A tilt of the nanograting wave vector at a fixed laser polarisation was also observed. The mechanism responsible for this peculiar dependency of several features of the nanogratings on the writing direction is qualitatively explained by considering the heat transport flux in the presence of a linearly polarised electric field, rather than by temporal and spatial chirp of the laser beam. The confirmed vectorial nature of the light-matter interaction opens new control of material processing with nanoscale precision.

    Original languageEnglish
    Article number39989
    JournalScientific Reports
    Volume7
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - 9 Jan 2017

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