Single-pulse femtosecond laser ablation of monocrystalline silicon: a modeling and experimental study

In this paper, a visualization model by using the COMSOL® Multiphysics was established to investigate the quantitative relationship between the parameters of the single-pulse femtosecond laser and the geometries of the ablated monocrystalline silicon micro-holes. Monocrystalline silicon was ablated with different femtosecond laser single-pulse energies and the diameters as well as the depths of the obtained micro-holes were compared with the prediction results of the established visualization model. The comparison results have demonstrated that the single-pulse femtosecond laser ablation results can be predicted effectively based on the established visualization model. The prediction error of the ablated micro-hole diameter and depth were within 2.31% and 15.40%, respectively, without any prior optimization experiments. It is thus possible to precisely conduct femtosecond laser ablation on monocrystalline silicon for desired geometries by utilizing appropriate parameters without trial-and-errors as in traditional femtosecond laser ablation technologies.