Surface birefringence of self-assembly periodic nanostructures induced on 6H-SiC surface by femtosecond laser

Abstract In this paper, we report the birefringence effect of surface self-assembly periodic nanostructures induced on 6H-SiC by femtosecond laser irradiation. Birefringence characteristic (e.g. cross-polarized image), measured by cross polarized microscopy, was found to be controlled by both single pulse energy and scanning velocity. Comparing birefringence measurement results of nanostructures and morphology characterization by Scanning electron microscopy, it is shown that ∼200 nm-period deep-subwavelength periodic ripples (DSWR) plays a dominating role in the birefringence effect. Raman spectra show that the change of retardance with pulse energy and scanning velocity is most possibly caused by the thickness variation of DSWR. Finally, a light attenuator based on a single layer of DSWR structure on 6H-SiC surface was constructed and tested by light source of 800 nm to have a tunable attenuating ratio of 69–100%.