Precise Ablation in Bulk Dielectrics through Synergistic Femtosecond Laser Irradiation and Ion Implantation

The transformations induced in dielectric materials upon irradiation with laser pulses are generally proportional to the spatial fluence distribution of the beam, especially when using femtosecond laser irradiation, where the laser-matter interaction process is more deterministic. Consequently, the contour of the modifications is determined by the beam shape at the surface position, while the crater depth profiles are directly correlated with in-volume energy deposition. Therefore, for Gaussian beam profiles the resulting crater profiles in bulk dielectrics shows a quasi-Gaussian depth profile, with increasing crater depth as the local fluence increases [1]. Nonetheless, for thin films on a substrate, delamination effects appear, leading to nearly flat ablation profiles, sometimes referred to as quantized structuring [2].