Ultrafast dynamics of femtosecond laser-induced nanostructure formation on metals

We perform a comparison study on femtosecond laser-induced nanostructures on three noble metals, Cu, Ag, and Au. Under identical experimental conditions, the three metals each gain a different amount of surface area increase resulting from nanostructuring. We show that the different surface area increase from nanostructuring directly relates to the competition of two ultrafast processes, electron-phonon coupling and hot electron diffusion, following femtosecond laser heating of metals. (C) 2009 American Institute of Physics. [doi:10.1063/1.3222937]