Irradiation of amorphous Ta42Si13N45 film with a femtosecond laser pulse

Films of 260 nm thickness, with atomic composition Ta_(42)Si_(13)N_(45), on 4" silicon wafers, have been irradiated in air with single laser pulses of 200 femtoseconds duration and 800 nm wave length. As sputter-deposited, the films are structurally amorphous. A laterally truncated Gaussian beam with a near-uniform fluence of ~0.6 J/cm^2 incident normally on such a film ablates 23 nm of the film. Cross-sectional transmission electron micrographs show that the surface of the remaining film is smooth and flat on a longrange scale, but contains densely distributed sharp nanoprotrusions that sometimes surpass the height of the original surface. Dark field micrographs of the remaining material show no nanograins. Neither does glancing angle X-ray diffraction with a beam illuminating many diffraction spots. By all evidence, the remaining film remains amorphous after the pulsed femtosecond irradiation. The same single pulse, but with an enhanced and slightly peaked fluence profile, creates a spot with flat peripheral terraces whose lateral extents shrink with depth, as scanning electron and atomic force micrographs revealed. Comparison of the various figures suggests that the sharp nanoprotrusions result from an ejection of material by brittle fraction and spallation, not from ablation by direct beam–solid interaction. Conditions under which spallation should dominate over ablation are discussed.