Study on the effect of ambient gas on nanostructure formation on metal surfaces during femtosecond laser ablation for fabrication of low-reflective surfaces

Nanostructure formation on bulk metals (silver, gold, copper and titanium) by femtosecond Ti-sapphire laser irradiation (775 nm, 150 fs) is studied aiming the production of low-reflectivity surfaces and the better understanding of the development process. The experiments were performed in nitrogen, air, oxygen and helium environments at atmospheric pressure. The samples were irradiated with fluences in the 0.1–2 J/cm2 range and an average pulse number of 100 falling over a given area. The reflectivity of the treated surfaces was determined by a microspectrometer in the 450–800 nm range and their morphology was studied by scanning electron microscopy. The gas ambience influenced the results via two effects: formation processes and the chemically-induced modifications of the nanostructures. In case of He the nanoparticle aggregates–otherwise generally present–are predominantly missing, which leads to a lower darkening efficiency. The presence of oxygen enhances the darkening effect for copper mostly at lower fluences, while causes a slow increase in reflectivity in the case of titanium (in case of pure oxygen) in the high fluence range. The surface morphology in case of nitrogen and air were quite similar probably due to their close molecular mass values.