Highly Regular Laser-Induced Periodic Surface Structures on Titanium Thin Films for Photonics and Fiber Optics.

Modern photonic devices demand low-cost, scalable methods for creating periodic patterns over diverse surfaces including nonplanar and tipped ones, the examples of which can be readily found in fiber optics. Laser-induced periodic surface structures (LIPSS) offer an attractive route for fabricating such patterns in a single-step straightforward procedure, where the temporal and spatial locality of the self-interference effects ensure robustness against variations of the laser processing parameters. In this work, we show the LIPSS-assisted oxidation of thin titanium films by near-IR femtosecond laser pulses as a promising technology for the production of regular gratings consisting of rutile ridges.