Laser Impact on a Drop

2014 APS/DFD Milton van Dyke Award Winner
The energy deposition in a liquid drop on a nanosecond time scale by impact of a laser pulse can induce various reactions, such as vaporization or plasma generation. The response of the drop can be extremely violent: The drop gets strongly deformed and propelled forward at several m/s, and subsequently breaks up or even explodes. These effects are used in a controlled manner during the generation of extreme ultraviolet (EUV) light in nanolithography machines for the fabrication of leading-edge semiconductor microchips. Detailed understanding of the fundamentals of this process is of key importance in order to advance the latest lithography machines.
In this video we show the impact of a focused laser pulse onto a millimeter-size drop in a regime comparable to what can be found in lithography machines. The drop’s life was recorded for various impact conditions by high-speed imaging at 20000 frames per second (FPS). The high reproducibility of the dynamics allowed us to use stroboscopic illumination with nanosecond exposure times leading to an effective frame rate of 10 million FPS. We present a scaling law and compare experimental results to numerical simulations, in order to show how the drop is propelled and deformed.
Authors
Alexander L. Klein, Physics of Fluids Group, Faculty of Science and Technology, University of Twente, The Netherlands
Claas Willem Visser, Physics of Fluids Group, Faculty of Science and Technology, University of Twente, The Netherlands
Wilco Bouwhuis, Physics of Fluids Group, Faculty of Science and Technology, University of Twente, The Netherlands
Henri Lhuissier, Laboratoire Matière et Systèmes Complexes, Université Paris Diderot, France
Chao Sun, Physics of Fluids Group, Faculty of Science and Technology, University of Twente, The Netherlands
Jacco H. Snoeijer, Physics of Fluids Group, Faculty of Science and Technology, University of Twente, The Netherlands
Emmanuel Villermaux, Aix-Marseille Université, IRPHE, France
Detlef Lohse, Physics of Fluids Group, Faculty of Science and Technology, University of Twente, The Netherlands
Hanneke Gelderblom, Physics of Fluids Group, Faculty of Science and Technology, University of Twente, The Netherlands
dx.doi.org/10.1103/APS.DFD.201...
See more videos in the 2014 APS/DFD Gallery of Fluid Motion gfm.aps.org/meetings/dfd-2014/

[@mikedotexe]

seriously amazing videos, thank you whoever is taking time to do this. and superiors, please give them a raise

[@nannesoar]

Fantastic presentation, so clear. I knew 100% of the time exactly what each graph was saying (which is rare) and it was 100% because of the way this was presented.

[@jcims]

Very cool. I bet this made a nice little 'snap', esp. with the poor little drop at the end.

[@maurocruz1824]

Amazing!

[@Inesophet]

the focused beam looks like the deathstar blowing up alderan.

[@1.4142]

Plasma

[@Collagenikov2012]

Maybe, you could use the vibes from a well-chosen music score to accompany & heighten the depth of interest in this animated invitation to the true wonders if science & physics, instead if some insidious run-on crap??? Please.