Femtosecond laser materials processing

Abstract

The use of femtosecond lasers allows materials processing of practically any material with extremely high precision and minimal collateral damage. Advantages over conventional laser machining (using pulses longer than a few tens of picoseconds) are realized by depositing the laser energy into the electrons of the material on a time scale short compared to the transfer time of this energy to the bulk of the material, resulting in increased ablation efficiency and negligible shock or thermal stress. The improvement in the morphology by using femtosecond pulses rather than nanosecond pulses has been studied in numerous materials from biologic materials to dielectrics to metals. During the drilling process, we have observed the onset of small channels which drill faster than the surrounding material.