Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 February 2011
Smooth polymer surfaces can be generated by VUV laser ablation at 157 nm. This has been demonstrated for poly-methyl-metacrylate (PMMA) by atomic force microscopy (AFM) analysis of laser-exposed surfaces. At excimer laser fluences below 30 mJ/cm2 the mean roughness (Ra) remains below 10 nm for both single and 10 shot exposures.
A detailed characterization of the surface nano-morphology distribution carried out by the “power spectral density” (PSD) analysis, shows that the surface is smoothened by the VUV laser for lateral scales smaller than 20 μm.