Single and multiple shot near-infrared femtosecond laser pulse ablation thresholds of copper

The single-shot ablation threshold and incubation coefficient of copper were investigated using an amplified near-infrared, femtosecond Ti:sapphire laser. To date, the near-infrared femtosecond ablation threshold of copper has been reported in the range of several hundred millijoules per cm(2) based primarily on multiple shot ablation studies. A careful study of the single shot ablation threshold for copper was carried out yielding an incident single-shot ablation threshold of (1.06 +/- 0.12) J/cm(2) for a clean copper foil surface. This was determined by measuring the diameters of the ablation spots as a function of the laser pulse energy using scanning electron microscopy for spatially Gaussian laser spots. When multiple shots were taken on the same spot, a reduction in ablation threshold was observed, consistent with a multiple shot incubation coefficient of 0.76 +/- 0.02. Similar experiments on 250 nm and 500 nm copper thin films sputtered on a silicon substrate demonstrated that scaling the threshold values with the absorbance of energy at the surface yields a consistent absorbed fluence threshold for copper of (59 +/- 10) mJ/cm(2). This absorbed threshold value is consistent with the expected value from a two-temperature model for the heating of copper with an electron-lattice coupling constant of g = 10(17) Wm(-3) K-1. Single-shot rippling of the surface in the threshold ablation intensity regime was also observed for the foil target but not for the smooth thin film target.