| Citation: | GAO Chen, CHEN Lin, ZHANG Zhong-yin, ZHANG Guo-dong, WANG Jiang, CHENG Guang-hua. Study onnanoscale etching of silicon carbide for deep-subwavelength features based on spatiotemporally shaped ultrafast laser pulses[J]. Chinese Optics. doi: 10.37188/CO.2026-0054
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Femtosecond-laser-induced self-organized interference, together with near-field enhancement and incubation effects, enables deep-subwavelength nanoetching. However, the formation of such structures usually relies on random surface scattering centers and multi-pulse feedback, leading to poor uniformity, limited repeatability, and high sensitivity to laser parameters. In this work, a spatiotemporal laser-energy modulation strategy is proposed to improve the writing quality of nanogrooves on 4H-SiC single-crystal surfaces. In the spatial domain, single-slit and double-slit beam shaping are employed to reconstruct the focal-plane energy distribution, suppress lateral energy spreading, and enhance the incubation and self-organized interference effects. In the temporal domain, a GHz burst mode is introduced to regulate the energy-deposition sequence, reduce the instantaneous energy-deposition intensity, and extend the annealing time. Static irradiation and dynamic scanning experiments were conducted to systematically investigate the surface morphology evolution and nanogroove formation mechanism under different modulation strategies. The results show that the elliptical focal spot formed by single-slit shaping enhances the incubation and annealing effects, producing nanogrooves with improved uniformity and edge regularity and a minimum groove width of 62 nm. Double-slit shaping further strengthens the interference-field confinement, reduces the dependence of nanogroove formation on random scattering centers, and decreases the minimum controllable groove width to 34 nm. By introducing GHz burst pulses on the basis of double-slit shaping, stepwise energy deposition through sub-pulses with a 400 ps interval reduces instantaneous strong excitation and suppresses molten redeposition and particle attachment, further decreasing the minimum controllable groove width to 24.5 nm. This spatiotemporal modulation strategy provides an effective technical approach and theoretical basis for high-precision, low-damage, and highly repeatable nanomanufacturing on third-generation semiconductor surfaces.
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