Ejection of glass melts and generation of nanofibers from the back surface of a glass plate by pulsed UV laser irradiation

Abstract

Several applications of glass nanofibers have been proposed for the past years. We found a new method for production of nanofibers with a diameter of 100 nm order from thin glass plates by irradiation with nanoseconds pulsed UV laser (wavelength is 355 nm). Although the generation of nanofibers from the back surface of a glass plate is convenient for continuous laser irradiation and collection of fibers, the details of the mechanism have not been elucidated yet. In this paper, we focused on the dynamics of ejection of glass melts that results in the formation of nanofibers, and investigated the mechanism of nanofiber generation. Based on the observation by a high-speed camera, we found that voids inside of the glass plate propagated in the laser propagation direction shot by shot, then, the void pushed the molten glass near the back surface. We also confirmed that the molten glass was ejected from the back surface of plates at a speed of 10-100 m/s. We assumed that the driving force is "recoil pressure", and compared the estimated pressure value from this experiment with that shown in the references. The value estimated by the relationship between pressure and momentum was 1.3 MPa, which was close to that reported in the past.

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