Nonequilibrium heat transfer characteristics during ultrafast pulse laser heating of a silicon microstructure

Abstract

This work provides the fundamental knowledge of energy transport characteristics during very short-pulse laser heating of semiconductors from a microscopic viewpoint. Based on the self-consistent hydrodynamic equations, in-situ interactions between carriers, optical phonons, and acoustic phonons are simulated to figure out energy transport mechanism during ultrafast pulse laser heating of a silicon substrate through the detailed information on the time and spatial evolutions of each temperature for carriers, longitudinal optical (LO) phonons, acoustic phonons. It is found that nonequilibrium between LO phonons and acoustic phonons should be considered for ultrafast pulse laser heating problem, two-peak structures become apparently present for the subpicosecond pulses because of the Auger heating. A substantial increase in carrier temperature is observed for lasers with a few picosecond pulse duration, whereas the temperature rise of acoustic and phonon temperatures is relatively small with decreasing laser pulse widths. A slight lagging behavior is observed due to the differences in relaxation times and heat capacities between two different phonons. Moreover, the laser fluence has a significant effect on the decaying rate of the Auger recombination.