Influence of irradiation dose on laser-induced surface nanostructures on silicon

We report on the dependence of femtosecond laser-induced periodic surface structures on an increase of incident pulse number. On silicon, the patterns evolve from linear, parallel sub-wavelength ripples, grossly perpendicular to the laser polarization, via coalesced wider features parallel to the polarization, to a crater with periodically structured, pillar-like walls. Closer inspection of the patterns indicates that the different features always continue to exhibit reminiscence to the preceding lower-dose patterns, suggesting that, indeed, all patterns can be created by ONE single GENERAL formation process, as in self-organized structure formation, and the different structures/feature sizes are NOT due to DIFFERENT mechanisms.