67th Annual Meeting of the APS Division of Fluid Dynamics (November 23, 2014 — November 25, 2014)

V0016: Laser impact on a drop

Authors

• Alexander L. Klein, Physics of Fluids Group, Faculty of Science and Technology, University of Twente, The Netherlands
• Claas Willem Visser, Physics of Fluids Group, Faculty of Science and Technology, University of Twente, The Netherlands
• Wilco Bouwhuis, Physics of Fluids Group, Faculty of Science and Technology, University of Twente, The Netherlands
• Henri Lhuissier, Laboratoire Matière et Systèmes Complexes, Université Paris Diderot, France
• Chao Sun, Physics of Fluids Group, Faculty of Science and Technology, University of Twente, The Netherlands
• Jacco H. Snoeijer, Physics of Fluids Group, Faculty of Science and Technology, University of Twente, The Netherlands
• Emmanuel Villermaux, Aix-Marseille Université, IRPHE, France
• Detlef Lohse, Physics of Fluids Group, Faculty of Science and Technology, University of Twente, The Netherlands
• Hanneke Gelderblom, Physics of Fluids Group, Faculty of Science and Technology, University of Twente, The Netherlands

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/APS.DFD.2014.GFM.V0016

The energy deposition in a liquid drop on a nanosecond time scale by impact of a laser pulse can induce various reactions, such as vaporization or plasma generation. The response of the drop can be extremely violent: The drop gets strongly deformed and propelled forward at several m/s, and subsequently breaks up or even explodes. These effects are used in a controlled manner during the generation of extreme ultraviolet (EUV) light in nanolithography machines for the fabrication of leading-edge semiconductor microchips. Detailed understanding of the fundamentals of this process is of key importance in order to advance the latest lithography machines.

In this video we show the impact of a focused laser pulse onto a millimeter-size drop in a regime comparable to what can be found in lithography machines. The drop’s life was recorded for various impact conditions by high-speed imaging at 20000 frames per second (FPS). The high reproducibility of the dynamics allowed us to use stroboscopic illumination with nanosecond exposure times leading to an effective frame rate of 10 million FPS. We present a scaling law and compare experimental results to numerical simulations, in order to show how the drop is propelled and deformed.

Physics of Fluids summary