Fabrication of grooves on 4H–SiC using femtosecond laser vector beam

Femtosecond lasers are widely acknowledged for their capability to groove and generate laser-induced periodic surface structures (LIPSS) on various materials. LIPSS structures include LSFL (low spatial frequency LIPSS) and HSFL (high spatial frequency LIPSS). In this study, a segmented waveplate (SWP) was used to transform a linearly polarized femtosecond laser Gaussian beam with a wavelength of 515 nm into a vector beam with a donut-shaped energy peak distribution and polarization of azimuthal and radial. Grooving was conducted on three different SiC surface conditions: polished and pre-processed (LSFL and HSFL), using linear, azimuthal, and radial polarization. This study investigated the differences in microstructure morphology and compared the ablation depths of the grooves. It was found that grooving on pre-processed LSFL 4H–SiC surfaces resulted in grooves with higher ablation depths than those produced on polished surfaces. Additionally, using azimuthal polarization on the HSFL surface could create fine HSFL structures (with a period of approximately 100 nm) between the initial periodic structures (with a period of approximately 250 nm) formed during the pre-processing.