Ultrafast dynamics and mechanism of structure formation in titanium nitride upon femtosecond laser irradiation for plasmonic enhanced photothermal effect

Femtosecond laser has great potential in controlling the surface structure of titanium nitride (TiN) to promote plasmonic photothermal effect. Studying the mechanism of femtosecond laser irradiation on the surface and inside of the TiN benefits the photothermal microdevices. Ultrafast dynamics of electrons and lattices of TiN films with different thicknesses were first studied through pump-probe technique, which found that the electron density is easier to reach the maximum on the surface than the electrons in deep-layers. High-frequency ripple was formed by tiny nucleation resulted from weak eruption of surface material on the thin TiN film, and low-frequency ripple was emerged through large nucleation of material clusters simultaneously on the thick TiN film. The blue shift and intensity changes of Raman peak on 200 nm TiN film indicate the heterogeneous structure changed from TiN to TiN_0.26 after laser processing, and the vacancy occupies causes the lattice vibration weakened. The 200 nm TiN film after processing shows enhanced local surface plasma resonance absorption effect, which induced the reflectivity is reduced by 30 %, and the light and thermal conversion efficiency increased by 80 %. These results proved the promising utilization of TiN in biological and medical applications, energy collection and thermal auxiliary magnetic records.