Laser ablation of a Cu-Al-Ni combinatorial thin film library: analysis of crater morphology and geometry

The conventional approach to studying laser-workpiece interaction in the ablation regime is to vary beam parameters used on a specimen of uniform chemical composition. The current work instead utilises a pulsed laser beam of constant parameters to ablate a ternary alloy thin film where the chemical composition of the sample varies continuously; this will enhance the understanding of pulsed laser ablation by means of a combinatorial approach. The analysis of the studied workpiece (a Cu-Al-Ni thin film deposited by magnetron sputtering) revealed the presence of both compositional and morphological gradients. Variation in the surface morphology was correlated to aluminium content. Single pulse laser ablation (Nd:YAG, 1064 nm, 30 ns, 4.54 J/cm2) of the surface resulted in different crater features, geometry and volume. Two characteristic regions separated by a transition zone were identified based on the craters’ geometrical and morphological characteristics. The ablated volume increases with the atomic percentage of aluminium up to a threshold value of roughly 30 at. % after which the ablation volume slowly declines. This phenomenon may be attributed to plasma absorption and heat dissipation in the thin film.