Formation and crystallisation of a liquid jet in a film exposed to a tightly focused laser beam

This paper considers the effect of an ultrashort laser pulse on a thin gold film on a glass substrate at a focal spot size near 1 μm. We analyse the motion and thermal history of a film that has peeled off from the substrate in the heating spot as a consequence of melting. The detached zone is shown to form a domeshaped bump whose motion is hindered by surface tension. After the dome stops and turns back, towards the substrate, a jet begins to grow on its top. Concurrently, because of the heat dissipation in the film, melt recrystallisation begins, involving first the dome and then the jet. The liquid part of the jet elongates and breaks up into droplets because of the Plateau–Rayleigh instability development. The formation of a neck and the detachment of the last droplet occur in the solidification zone between the crystalline and liquid parts of the jet. The propagation of the crystallisation zone in the jet leads the necking process, so neck disruption occurs in the solid phase under nonequilibrium crystallisation conditions (the melt temperature is hundreds of kelvins lower than the melting point), at limiting mechanical stress and at high deformation rates. As a result, the jet transforms into a high needle with an extremely small tip radius (a few nanometres).