Laser induced non-thermal deposition of ultrathin graphite

Abstract

We present a laser induced ablation process to fabricate ultrathin graphitic flakes. By varying the fluence of the ablating pulsed fs-laser radiation, we identify distinct values for "thermal" evaporation and so-called "non-thermal" ablation of graphitic flakes. The presence of the non-thermal ablation is a direct consequence of the strong asymmetry of the bonding strength in normal and in-plane direction in layered materials, such as graphite. The experimentally extracted non-thermal ablation threshold for graphite of 250 mJ/cm2 agrees well with theoretical predictions. Finally, we deposited ultrathin graphitic flakes of 50 μm2 in size, which we characterize by Raman spectroscopy and scanning force microscopy.