We are happy to announce the publication of our manuscript entitled “High-speed manufacturing of highly regular laser-induced periodic surface structures on metals: physical origin of the regularity.” to the journal Scientific Reports of the Nature Publishing Group.

In the paper, we at HiLASE developed the theory of surface plasmon polaritons for materials irradiated by intense laser light, and our co-authors in University of Modena (Italy) prepared laser-induced periodic surface structures at high throughput, competitive with other existing methods of lithography. Novelty of the study lies in the accuracy of the description that could be made a large range of materials, where the laser-induced nanostructures will be highly regular for developing nanostructure demanding applications. The study also reveals that reducing the wavelength of the laser may improve the regularity for seemingly any material. We hope this paper will help the large community of scientists and engineers working in this field to reach a better control of their laser-induced nanostructures in future.

Link to the paper: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-017-08788-z

Official press release: http://www.hilase.cz/en/thibault-derrien-and-yoann-levy-published-in-scientific-reports/

Our latest paper on the mechanisms of highly regular laser nanostructuring was presented at the Advanced Electromagnetics Symposium (AES), Incheon, close to Seoul, South Korea.

A new publication has been released in SPIE Proceedings. It presents a large scale model of ultrashort laser modification of semiconductors that was developed at Hilase to predict the changes of silicon material upon intense pulsed laser irradiation. A more complete publication aiming to demonstrate the level of prediction we have reached is under preparation.

• The link on SPIE website
• The paper on ResearchGate.net.
• The paper is also available on our server. However, this link could be removed upon demand of SPIE in case.

A 4-years PhD position has opened at Hilase (Prague, Czech Republic) on modelling of multilayered materials upon ultrashort laser irradiation. The offer is available here in PDF format.

Further information are available here:

• Research group is RP4 “Scientific applications”, with group leader Prof. Nadezhda M. Bulgakova.
• Informal supervisors of the PhD thesis are Dr Thibault J.-Y. Derrien and Dr Yoann Levy.
• Contract is for 4 years in international atmosphere and experimental context. Can start directly.

Looking forward to hearing from you soon!

One of the great advantages to develop with Python is the capacity to work on any environment.

Hence, the “Plasmonic Toolkit” has now started its first steps on Windows today.
Installation procedure is available here.

Main possible encountered problems are :

• Symbolic link management,
• TeX plotting management.

Any issue can be addressed via email for debugging. Please don’t forget to attach your error messages.

Report on the QuantumLaP project will be presented as a 1h seminar at Hilase Centre, on the 28th of March 2017, 2pm.

Development of predictive tools for the laser tailoring of material properties

Using intense laser beams, materials can be functionalized by inducing local modifications of the surface topography and/or the band gap, and by triggering local chemical reactions (oxidation, bond restructuring, etc.). Impressive capabilities of ultrashort laser pulses have already enabled the emergence of a wide range of real-world applications, such as surface colorizing and wetting engineering. Novel possibilities are now being explored toward tabletop particle accelerators, high-harmonic generation, potentials of using mixed laser beams. Fundamental novelty behind these applications lies in the laser-induced modification of the electronic structure which is still poorly understood because of lack of ultrafast probing experimental techniques with nanoscale spatial resolution. In this context, improvement of available theories and modeling tools used for studying laser processing is highly demanded for bringing more understanding and accurate predicting of material evolution at nanoscale in a wide range of laser parameters. Developing a bridge between the classical descriptions with first-principle theories is an essential part of advancing laser processing technologies.

In this seminar, I will present how modeling the behavior of electron dynamics upon high intensity enables the possibility to perform reliable predictions for single- and bi-color laser irradiation of semiconductors [http://www.quantumlap.eu/]. Two different scales of the same physics will be addressed: modeling of the experimental effects (such as transient reflectivity change), and the corresponding quantum processes (time-resolved dynamics of electron excitation in bandgap material).

A new collaborative paper was recently published, where simulation code on Surface Plasmon Polaritons was used to compare with experimental results on laser induced nanostructures periods for several laser wavelengths.

To meet requirements from Horizon 2020, we also submitted the paper on arXiv.

Maragkaki et al, Wavelength Dependence of Picosecond Laser-Induced Periodic Surface Structures on Copper, Applied Surface Science, DOI: 10.1016/j.apsusc.2017.02.068 (IF 2015: 3.15).

Our new paper together with several famous authors in modeling the laser-matter interaction was just published online in MRS Bulletin (impact factor 6.06). And we are proud to see that it actually made the cover of the journal. :o)
Shugaev et al, MRS Bulletin 41, 960 (2016)

The 6th international LIPSS (Laser Induced Perodic Surface Structures) workshop was held in FORTH University of Heraklion, in Crete.

The latest developments of the theory on Surface Plasmon Polaritons (SPP) adapted for laser ablation conditions were presented in an invited talk, after 1st publication of the project appeared online. The future open-source tool for performing predictions of surface nanostructuring by lasers was promoted.

An abstract of the presented work is available on the BAM repository.

I attended the Octopus Developer Meeting 2016, held in Max Planck Institute for Structure and Dynamics of Matter (Hamburg), and was proposed to give an oral presentation.

More details are available there.