Regulating Morphology and Composition of Laser-Induced Periodic Structures on Titanium Films with Femtosecond Laser Wavelength and Ambient Environment

Recently, highly uniform thermochemical laser-induced periodic surface structures (TLIPSS) have attracted significant research attention due to their practical applicability for upscalable fabrication of periodic surface morphologies important for surface functionalization, diffraction optics, sensors, etc. When processed by femtosecond (fs) laser pulses in oxygen-containing environments, TLIPSS are formed on the material surface as parallel protrusions upon local oxidation in the maxima of the periodic intensity pattern coming from interference of the incident and scattered waves. From an application point of view, it is important to control both the TLIPSS period and nanoscale morphology of the formed protrusions that can be expectedly achieved by scalable shrinkage of the laser-processing wavelength as well as by varying the ambient environment. However, so far, the fabrication of uniform TLIPSS was reported only for near-IR wavelength in air. In this work, TLIPSS formation on the surface of titanium (Ti) films was systematically studied using near-IR (1026 nm), visible (513 nm) and UV (256 nm) wavelengths revealing linear scalability of the protrusion period versus the fs-laser wavelength. By changing the ambient environment from air to vacuum (10^-2 atm) and pressurized nitrogen gas (2.5 atm) we demonstrate tunability of the composition and morphology of the Ti TLIPSS protrusions. In particular, Raman spectroscopy revealed formation of TiN together with dominating TiO₂ (rutile phase) in the TLIPSS protrusions produced in the nitrogen-rich atmosphere.