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The ablation depths of a 200 nm thick nickel film by ultrafast lasers were simulated and improperly compared with the existing numerical results for a bulk nickel target in our paper [Appl. Opt. 54, 1737 (2015) [CrossRef] ]. The ultrafast laser ablation of a 1 μm thick nickel film is, therefore, simulated here, which demonstrates that the conclusions in our published paper are not affected and that the adopted 1 μm film is sufficiently thick to be used for the simulation of the ablation behavior of a bulk nickel target subject to 1 ps laser irradiation.
© 2015 Optical Society of America
In [1], the ablation depths of a 200 nm thick nickel (Ni) film subject to 1 ps lasers were simulated and compared with the results by Zhigilei et al. [2]. However, the simulations by Zhigilei et al. [2] were performed for a bulk Ni target and were improperly described as the simulations for a 200 nm Ni film in [1]. As a result, the irradiation of a 1 μm thick Ni film by 1 ps lasers with the absorbed fluences of 1200, 1400, and is simulated here, with other simulation parameters remaining the same as those in [1]. Figure 1 shows the comparison of the simulated ablation depths with the results for a bulk Ni target presented in [2]. Likewise, the present work for a 1 μm thick Ni film predicts the profound contribution of hot electron blast force to the ablation yield. Moreover, the ablation depths simulated without the hot electron blast force are also significantly different from those in [2]. Figure 2 illustrates the distributions of lattice temperature and along the film thickness direction for the absorbed fluence of at the time instants after the completion of ablation. As can be clearly seen, the lattice temperature at the film bottom is kept at a room temperature of , and the stress wave is propagating toward the rear film surface, and no stress reflection from the free rear surface has occurred. This indicates that the free rear surface has no effect on the laser-induced ablation in the front film region and that the chosen film thickness of 1 μm is sufficiently large for simulating the ultrafast laser ablation depths in a bulk Ni target, as discussed in [2]. The simulation results for the 1 ps laser ablation of the 1 μm thick Ni film do not change the conclusions made in [1].
Fig. 1. Comparison of the simulated ablation depths in the Ni target by the 1 ps lasers at different absorbed fluences.
Fig. 2. Distributions of (a) lattice temperature and (b) along the film thickness direction for the 1 ps laser with absorbed fluence of .
References
1. Y. G. Shen, Y. Gan, W. J. Qi, Y.-G. Shen, and Z. Chen, “Effect of hot electron blast force on ultrafast laser ablation of nickel thin film,” Appl. Opt. 54, 1737–1742 (2015). [CrossRef]
2. L. Zhigilei, Z. Lin, and D. Ivanov, “Atomistic modeling of short pulse laser ablation of metals: Connections between melting, spallation, and phase explosion,” J. Phys. Chem. C 113, 11892–11906 (2009). [CrossRef]
