Mechanisms of plasmon-enhanced femtosecond laser nanoablation of silicon.

We perform plasmon-enhanced femtosecond laser ablation of silicon using gold nanorods to produce sub-diffraction limit features. While the observed hole shape seems inconsistent with calculated field distribution, we show that using a carrier diffusion-based model, both shape and depth of the nanoholes can be reliably explained. The laser energy is first deposited into electron-hole pairs that are created in the nanostructure's enhanced near-field. Those carriers then diffuse and transfer their energy to the silicon lattice, producing ablation. Increased importance of the carrier diffusion process is shown to arise from the extreme localization of the deposited energy around the nanostructure, due to the plasmonic effect. The characteristic shape of holes is revealed as a striking signature of the screened charge carriers-phonon coupling that is shown to channel the heat transfer to the lattice and control ablation.