Nanosecond-Laser Ablation

Abstract

Material removal caused by short high-intensity laser pulses is often termed pulsed-laser ablation (PLA). Throughout the literature, the terms laser-assisted evaporation and laser sputtering are also frequently used. Within the regime under consideration, material removal takes place far from equilibrium and may be based on thermal or non-thermal microscopic mechanisms. For this reason, we will prefer the term laser ablation, which is less suggestive with respect to the fundamental mechanisms involved in the process. PLA permits one to widely suppress the dissipation of the excitation energy beyond the volume that is ablated during the pulse.