New experimental evidence of the periodic surface structure in laser annealing

Abstract

This letter presents a study of the nature of the periodic structure observed on the edge of laser-annealed spots on ion-implanted silicon. The direction of the periodic fringes was always found to be about perpendicular to the E vector of the light for linearly polarized beams. No fringe pattern was observed for circular polarization. We suggest that the pattern observed is due to heating by a standing wave resulting from the interference of the impinging wave and a radial (longitudinal) scattered wave.