Ablation control by applying magnetic and electric fields

Abstract

Laser fabrication with ultra-short laser pulses (sub-1 ps) have the ability for precise energy delivery to target materials for ablation, spallation or polymerisation down to sub-wavelength resolution. We show, that by applying electrical and magnetic fields, the electron-ion ablation plasma can be controlled following the Lorentz force exerted on to the plasma F = eE + e[v ×B], where v is velocity of charge e, E is the applied electrical bias and B is the magnetic flux density. The vectorial nature of the Lorentz force was investigated using the ablation of silicon. The application potential for ablation debris control and mass, charge spectroscopes of ablated materials is discussed.