Angular emission of ions and mass deposition from femtosecond and nanosecond laser-produced plasmas

We investigated the angular distribution of ions and atoms emanating from femto- and nanosecond laser-produced metal plasmas under similar laser fluence conditions. For producing plasmas, aluminum targets are ablated in vacuum employing pulses from a Ti:Sapphire ultrafast laser (40 fs, 800 nm) and an Nd:YAG laser (6 ns, 1064 nm). The angular distribution of ion emission as well as the kinetic energy distribution is characterized by a Faraday cup, while a quartz microbalance is used for evaluating deposited mass. The ion and deposited mass features showed that fs laser ablated plasmas produced higher kinetic energy and more mass per pulse than ns plumes over all angles. The ion flux and kinetic energy studies show fs laser plasmas produce narrower angular distribution while ns laser plasmas provide narrower energy distribution. (C) 2012 American Institute of Physics. [http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.4730444]