Advanced materials processing based on interaction of laser beam and a medium

Abstract

Hybrid laser processing for precision microfabrication of hard materials, in which the interaction of a conventional pulsed laser beam and a medium on the material surface leads to effective ablation and modification, is reviewed. The main role of the medium is to produce strong absorption of the nanosecond laser beam by the materials. Simultaneous irradiation with the vacuum ultraviolet (VUV) laser beam which possesses extremely small laser fluence greatly improves the ablation quality and modification efficiency for hard materials such as fused silica, crystal quartz, sapphire, GaN, and SiC by the ultraviolet (UV) laser irradiation (VUV-UV multiwavelength excitation process). Metal plasma generated by the laser beam effectively assists high-quality ablation of transparent materials, resulting in microstructuring, cutting, color marking, printing and selective metallization of glass materials (laser-induced plasma-assisted ablation (LIPAA)). The detailed discussion presented here includes the ablation mechanism of hybrid laser processing. © 2003 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.