TY - JOUR A1 - Krüger, Jörg A1 - Dufft, Daniela A1 - Koter, Robert A1 - Hertwig, Andreas T1 - Femtosecond laser-induced damage of gold films N2 - Single- and multi-shot ablation thresholds of gold films in the thickness range of 31–1400 nm were determined employing a Ti:sapphire laser delivering pulses of 28 fs duration, 793 nm center wavelength at 1 kHz repetition rate. The gold layers were deposited on BK7 glass by an electron beam evaporation process and characterized by atomic force microscopy and ellipsometry. A linear dependence of the ablation threshold fluence Fth on the layer thickness d was found for d ≤ 180 nm. If a film thickness of about 180 nm was reached, the damage threshold remained constant at its bulk value. For different numbers of pulses per spot (N-on-1), bulk damage thresholds of ~0.7 J cm-2 (1-on-1), 0.5 J cm-2 (10-on-1), 0.4 J cm-2 (100-on-1), 0.25 J cm-2 (1000-on-1), and 0.2 J cm-2 (10000-on-1) were obtained experimentally indicating an incubation behavior. A characteristic layer thickness of Lc ˜ 180 nm can be defined which is a measure for the heat penetration depth within the electron gas before electron–phonon relaxation occurs. Lc is by more than an order of magnitude larger than the optical absorption length of α-1 ˜ 12 nm at 793 nm wavelength. KW - Single- and multi-shot ablation KW - Ti:sapphire laser KW - Gold films PY - 2007 SN - 0169-4332 SN - 1873-5584 VL - 253 IS - 19 SP - 7815 EP - 7819 PB - North-Holland CY - Amsterdam AN - OPUS4-15686 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER -