Computational fluid dynamics simulations of silicon μ-structure formation during excimer laser modification of silicon-nanoparticle layers

Abstract

The laser modification of silicon-nanoparticle layers with a nanosecond pulsed excimer laser leads to the self-organized formation of crystalline, μ-cone-shaped silicon structures with good electronic properties, which have allowed the demonstration of their potential for printed flexible electronics. With the current nanosecond laser process, silicon exhibits only short melting times, resulting in a method-defined substrate contact angle, instead of this parameter being defined by the substrate surface energy as expected for equilibrium conditions. This substrate material-independent non-equilibrium contact angle of the silicon melt was experimentally determined in this study to be Θ = 68 ± 10°. To gain deeper insight into the process of the sequential melting and the formation of the silicon μ-cone structures during laser modification, a two-dimensional computational fluid dynamics simulation was performed in COMSOL Multiphysics® solving the Navier-Stokes equation for incompressible fluids. The simulation uses an effective medium approach by applying the conservative level set method to describe the porous silicon-nanoparticle layer. Its sequential melting during the pulsed laser modification is modeled using a newly developed simulation methodology, which uses a time- and depth-dependent dynamic viscosity of the molten silicon. The simulation was carried out for different laser energy densities and verified using scanning electron microscopy images of corresponding laser-modified samples. The simulation results agree well with the experiment and were subsequently used to optimize the laser process.