Non-ablative texturing of silicon surface with a continuous wave fiber laser

Laser surface texturing based on ablation has been widely used, but hardly any reports can be found on non-ablative laser surface texturing. Silicon is highly transparent to the infrared wavelength of fiber laser (lambda = 1090 nm) and thus regarded as an unsuitable tool for the purpose of surface texturing. However, we succeeded in using a continuous wave fiber laser to produce regular arrays of sub-micron bumps on silicon surface. The approach is shown to be based on laser-induced oxidation of silicon. (C)2012 Optical Society of America