Ultrashort pulse damage of semiconductors

Abstract

First, we give a briefly critically discuss the existing definitions of melting and damage thresholds and the different kinds of experimental determinations of the thresholds. Then we investigate the thermal and athermal melting of oxides (wide-band gap semiconductors) and of silicon by solv-ing a rate equation for the excited electrons and a by complete self-consistent solution of a coupled system of differential equations for the electron density and for the electron and phonon temperatures. In particular, we direct our attention to the still open question about the value for the critical electron density in the case of athermal melting.