Development of a tip enhanced near-field laser ablation system for sub-micrometric analysis of solid samples
Abstract
A near-field laser ablation system was developed for the analysis of inorganic solid samples in the
nanometer resolution range. The instrument is based on the coupling of a nanosecond Nd:YAG laser
with an atomic force microscope. The technique uses a tip enhancement effect obtained by the
interaction of laser radiation with the conductive tip of the AFM maintained at a few nanometers above
the sample surface. By applying this technique to conducting gold and semiconducting silicon samples,
a lateral resolution of 100 nm was demonstrated. With a single laser pulse, craters of about 100 nm in
diameter and a few nanometers in depth were obtained. A multi-parametric study was carried out in
order to understand the effect of different experimental parameters (laser fluence, tip-to-sample
distance, sample and tip nature) on the near-field laser ablation efficiency, crater dimensions and
amount of ablated material. Numerical simulations of the localized heating with a home-made 3-D code
presented a good explanation for the nanometer-sized crater diameters obtained in our experiments
Origin : Files produced by the author(s)
Loading...