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arXiv · 2602.06099

Novel non-thermal Ablation Mechanics in the Laser Ablation of Silicon

Dominic Klein·Simon Kümmel·Johannes Roth
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Abstract

We investigate the non-thermal material dynamics of strongly excited silicon during ultra-fast laser ablation. In contrast to metals, silicon shows strongly excitation-dependent interatomic bonding strengths, which gives rise to a number of unique material dynamics like non-thermal melting, Coulomb explosions and altered carrier heat conduction due to charge carrier confinement. In this study, we report novel non-thermal ablation mechanisms in the ultra-fast single shot laser ablation of silicon and perform large scale massive multi-parallel simulations on experimentally achievable length scales with atomistic resolution. For this, we model the ultra-fast carrier dynamics utilizing the Thermal-Spike-Model coupled to Molecular Dynamics simulations and include the accompanied excitation-dependent nonthermal bonding strength manipulation by application of the excitation-dependent modified Tersoff Potential. Further, we present first results on the systematic construction of the excitation-dependent phase diagram of silicon by thermodynamic integration.

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Dominic Klein, Simon Kümmel, Johannes Roth. 2026-02-05. Novel non-thermal Ablation Mechanics in the Laser Ablation of Silicon. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-91312-9_10

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