Molecular dynamics investigation of mechanisms of femtosecond laser ablation
Abstract
Laser micro-machining has been widely applied for material processing in many industries. A phenomenon called "laser ablation" is usually involved in the laser micro-machining process. Laser ablation is the process of material removal after the irradiation of a laser beam onto the material. It is commonly characterized by small temporal and spatial scales, extremely high material temperature and pressure, and strong non-equilibrium thermodynamic state. In this work, molecular dynamics (MD) simulation is conducted to study the femtosecond laser ablation of metals (nickel and copper) and dielectrics (fused silica, or glass). The laser heating and the ablation processes are numerically modeled, and the computation is accelerated by parallel processing technique. Both the pair-wise Morse potential and the many-body EAM (Embedded-Atom Method) potential are employed for metals. In the simulation of fused silica, the BKS (van Beest, Kramer and van Santen) potential is used, and the generation of free electrons, the energy transport from laser beam to free electrons and energy coupling between electrons and the lattice are considered. The main goal of this work is to illustrate the detailed processes of femtosecond laser ablation and to study its mechanisms. From the MD results, it is found that the mechanism of femtosecond laser ablation is strongly dependent on the laser fluences. For metals, low fluence laser ablation is mainly through phase explosion (homogeneous gas bubble nucleation), while spinodal decomposition is responsible for high fluence ablation. Ablation mechanism is determined by whether or not the material (liquid) temperature exceeds the critical temperature. For fused silica, the generation and existence of free electrons are found to affect ablation significantly, especially at low fluence, where Coulomb explosion is found to play an important role in material separation.
Degree
Ph.D.
Advisors
Xu, Purdue University.
Subject Area
Mechanical engineering|Materials science|Optics
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