Thermal mechanisms in laser ablation of GaAs

Estimations of GaAs surface temperature during laser irradiation, using recently published optical data and their temperature dependence for laser fluences around the melting threshold and photon-energies above the band-gap energy are presented in this work. These results are compared with the experimentally measured ablation threshold values of Okano et al. [J. Phys.: Condense Matter 6 (1994) 2697] and Vivet et al. [J. Appl. Phys. 78 (1995)]. The good agreement observed between the temperature estimations and the measured ablation threshold fluences suggests that thermal mechanisms are important in laser ablation of GaAs with photon-energies greater than the band-gap energy.