Approximately 30 nm Nanogroove Formation on Single Crystalline Silicon Surface under Pulsed Nanosecond Laser Irradiation

Nanogrooves with a minimum feature size down to 30 nm (λ/26) can be formed directly on silicon surface by irradiation from two orthogonal polarized 1064 nm/10 ns fiber laser beams. The creation of such small nanogrooves is attributed to surface thermal stress during resolidification and supercooling with the double laser beams' irradiation. By varying the pulse number and laser fluence, the feature size of narrow grooves on silicon surface can be tuned. The experimental results and numerical calculation of surface thermal behaviors indicated that the high repetition rate of the nanosecond laser leads to the incubation effect and different silicon optical and thermal properties during laser irradiation. Resolution on this scale should be attractive in nanolithography, particularly considering that this method is available in far field and in ambient air.