Joining of transparent materials by femtosecond laser pulses

Abstract

When a femtosecond laser pulse is focused at the interface of two transparent substrates, localized melting and quenching of the two substrates occur around the focal volume due to nonlinear absorption. The substrates can then be joined by resolidification of the materials. We demonstrate the joining of similar and dissimilar glass substrates using a 1-kHz 800-nm Ti:sapphire amplifier. We investigated the laser parameter to join transparent substrates and characterized the joint strength and the transmittance through joint volumes.