Formation of Porous Structure with Subspot Size under the Irradiation of Picosecond Laser Pulses

Abstract

A study was presented in this paper on porous structure with microsize holes significantly smaller than laser spot on the stainless steel 304 target surface induced by a picosecond Nd:van regenerative amplified laser, operating at 1064 nm. The target surface variations were studied in air ambience. The estimated surface damage threshold was 0.15 J/cm2. The target specific surface changes and phenomena observed supported a complementary study on the formation and growth of the subspot size pit holes on metal surface with dependence of laser pulse number of 50–1000 and fluences of 0.8 and 1.6 J/cm2. Two kinds of porous structures were presented: periodic holes are formed from Coulomb Explosion during locally spatial modulated ablation, and random holes are formed from the burst of bubbles in overheated liquid during phase explosion. It can be concluded that it is effective to fabricate a large metal surface area of porous structure by laser scanning regime. Generally, it is also difficult for ultrashort laser to fabricate the microporous structures compared with traditional methods. These porous structures potentially have a number of important applications in nanotechnology, industry, nuclear complex, and so forth.