Optodynamic study of multiple pulses micro drilling

This paper describes an analysis of pulsed lasers micro-drilling of different metals. Study focuses to an optodynamic phenomenon which appears as thermal effects induced by laser light pulses and leads to dynamic process manifested as ultrasonic shock waves propagating into the sample material. The shock waves are detected by a non-contact optical method by using arm compensated Michelson. Monitoring of the main parameters of the micro drilling such as material ablation rate and efficiency was realized by analysis of the optodynamic signals. The process is characterized by decreasing ablation rate that leads to the finite hole depth. The experimental part of study comprehends a comparison between various metals. In order to describe decreasing ablation rate a theoretical model based on the energy balance is proposed. It considers the energy/heat transfer from the laser beam to the material and predicts a decreasing drilling rate with an increasing number of successive laser pulses. According to the proposed model, the finite depth of the hole appears as a consequence of the increasing surface area through which the energy of the laser beam is conducted away to the material around the processed area. Decreasing ablation rate and the finite hole depth predicted by model were in good agreement with the experimental results.     

Femtosecond laser drilling of crystalline and multicrystalline silicon for advanced solar cell fabrication

The rear contact solar cell concept has been implemented to increase the solar cell efficiency. Practically, it necessitates rapid fabrication of a large number of via holes to form low-loss current paths. It is not a trivial task to drill a number of microscopic holes through a typical Si wafer of ??200???m thickness at reasonable processing throughput and yield. In this research, a femtosecond laser is employed to drill via holes in both crystalline silicon (c-Si) and multicrystalline silicon (mc-Si) thin wafers of ??170???m thickness with various laser parameters such as number of laser shots and pulse energy. Since a significantly high pulse energy compared to ablation threshold is mainly applied, aiming to achieve a rapid drilling process, the femtosecond laser beam is subjected to complex non-linear characteristics. Therefore, the relative placement of the sample with respect to the laser focal position is also rigorously examined. While the non-linear effect at high pulse energy regime is complex, it also facilitates the drilling process in terms of achieving high-aspect ratio, for example, by extending the effective depth of focus by non-linear effect. Cross-sectional morphological analysis in conjunction with on-line emission and shadowgraph imaging are carried out in order to elucidate the drilling mechanism.     

Drilling rate of five metals with picosecond laser pulses at 355, 532, and 1064 nm

Experimental results on picosecond laser processing of aluminum, nickel, stainless steel, molybdenum, and tungsten are described. Hole drilling is employed for comparative analysis of processing rates in an air environment. Drilling rates are measured over a wide range of laser fluences (0.05–20?J/cm²). Experiments with picosecond pulses at 355?nm are carried out for all five metals and in addition at 532?nm, and 1064?nm for nickel. A comparison of drilling rate with 6-ps and 6-ns pulses at 355?nm is performed. The dependence of drilling rate on laser fluence measured with picosecond pulses demonstrates two logarithmic regimes for all five metals. To determine the transition from one regime to another, a critical fluence is measured and correlated with the thermal properties of the metals. The logarithmic regime at high-fluence range with UV picosecond pulses is reported for the first time. The energy efficiency of material removal for the different regimes is evaluated. The results demonstrate that UV picosecond pulses can provide comparable quality and higher processing rate compared with literature data on ablation with near-IR femtosecond lasers. A significant contribution of two-photon absorption to the ablation process is suggested to explain high processing rate with powerful UV picosecond pulses.     

Theoretical determination of the ablation rate of metals in multiple-nanosecond laser pulses irradiation regime

A detailed understanding of the physical determinants of the ablation rate in multiple nanosecond laser pulses regime is of key importance for technological applications such as patterning and pulsed-laser deposition. Here, theoretical modeling is employed to investigate the ablation of thick metallic plates by intense, multiple nanosecond laser pulses. A new photo-thermal model is proposed, in which the complex phenomena associated to the ablation process are accounted for as supplementary terms of the classical heat equation. The pulsed laser ablation in the nanosecond regime is considered as a competition between thermal vapourization and melt ejection under the action of the plasma recoil pressure. Computer simulations using the photo-thermal model presented here and the comparison of the theoretical results with experiment indicate two different mechanisms that contribute to the decrease of the ablation efficiency. First, during the ablation process the vapour/plasma plume expanding above the irradiated target attenuates the laser beam that reaches the sample, leading to a marked decrease of the ablation efficiency. Additional attenuation of the laser beam incident on the sample is produced due to the heating of the plasma by the absorption of the laser beam into the plasma plume. The second mechanism by which the ablation efficiency decreases consists of the reduction of the incident laser intensity with the lateral area, and of the melt ejection velocity with the depth of the hole.     

Femtosecond pulsed laser ablation with spatial filtering

With the rise in demand for miniaturized features with better acute edge acuity and negligible thermal damage zone, one of the key vital areas lies in the refinement of the quality of the laser beam itself. Spatial filter is routinely used in optical micromachining systems to smoothen the Gaussian profile of the machining spot in order to obtain a feature of the desired quality. However, its profile smoothening effect has never been investigated for femtosecond pulsed laser micromachining process since the extremely high peak power of femtosecond pulses will cause damage on the filtering aperture of spatial filter. During the development of an acousto-optical micromachining system using femtosecond pulses, we found that if the damage of the filtering aperture can be circumvented, spatial filter can improve the machining quality of femtosecond pulse ablation, especially when ablation is conducted at low-fluency range (just above the ablation threshold fluency). In this paper, we investigate and demonstrate both the improvement and potential that beam refinement can bring about. In our experiment, a series of test patterns were ablated with a 400 nm second-harmonic Ti:Sapphire femtosecond laser of 150 fs duration at varying pulse energy ranging from 31 to 39 nJ. The specimen used in the experiment is a platinum- (Pt) sputtered coating of 100 nm thickness on a quartz substrate. The results show a significant improvement in the constancy of the shape as well as the size of ablated feature, revealing an improved beam profile and beam energy distribution due to spatial filtering.     

Deep drilling of metals by femtosecond laser pulses

Results of recent investigations on deep drilling of metals by femtosecond laser pulses are reported. At high laser fluences, well above the ablation threshold, femtosecond lasers can drill deep, high-quality holes in metals without any post-processing or special gas environment. It is shown that for high-quality drilling of metals, the following processes are important: (1) laser-induced optical breakdown of air containing metal vapor and small metal particles (debris) generated by multi-pulse femtosecond laser ablation, (2) transformation of laser pulses into light filaments, and (3) low-fluence finishing. Received: 15 November 2002 / Accepted: 20 January 2003 / Published online: 28 May 2003 RID="*" ID="*"Corresponding author. Fax: +49-511/2788-100, E-mail: ch@lzh.de     

Generation of high energy and good beam quality pulses with a master oscillator power amplifier

A high efficiency and high peak power laser system with short-pulse and good beam quality has been demonstrated by using a master oscillator power amplifier with two-pass amplification configuration. The master oscillator, end-pumped with a fiber-coupled laser diode array, provides low power but excellent beam quality pulses, and the amplifier boosts the pulse energy by orders without significant beam quality degradation. Short pulses of 8.5 ns with energy up to 130 mJ and approximately diffraction limited beam quality have been demonstrated.     

Sub-picosecond UV laser ablation of metals

Laser ablation of Nickel, Copper, Molybdenum, Indium, Tungsten and Gold by short ultraviolet laser pulses (0.5 ps, 248 nm) in vacuum is reported for the first time. For Nickel and Indium, ablation is also studied in air to demonstrate the influence of the ambient atmosphere. Metal ablation in air is significantly less efficient than in vacuum due to redeposition of ablated material. The ablation rates in vacuum are discussed using a thermal model, which also allows to estimate ablation rates for other metals from basic optical and thermal properties. A comparison of the morphology of ablation sites after nanosecond and sub-picosecond ablation shows unequivocally the advantages of short-pulse laser ablation for high-precision patterning of thermally good conducting materials in micron-scale dimensions.     

Laser drilling of thick material using femtosecond pulse with a focus of dual-frequency beam

Laser drilling is one of the basic, most frequently performed, material removal processes. The drilling aspect ratio is theoretically limited by the size and the focal depth of the machining laser spot. The aspect ratio can be improved by using dual focus. In this paper we describe a focus of two different frequencies based on the longitudinal chromatic aberration arisen when polychromatic collimated light is incident on a positive lens element. In the experiments, a Ti:Sapphire laser of 800 nm wavelength and 150 fs pulse duration was used as a source. Two tightly focused laser spots few hundred micrometers apart from each other were formed by focusing a combined collimated laser beam which contains the fundamental optic frequency and the second harmonic optic frequency. The focus of dual-frequency beam was used to drill a 3 mm thick PMMA plate. The drilling aspect ratio of a dual-frequency beam was compared to that of a focus of single frequency beam. Experimental results reveal that dual-frequency beam increases the aspect ratio and improves the drilling quality in terms of profile of the produced features.     

Sub-picosecond UV-laser ablation of Ni films

Laser ablation of thin Ni films on fused silica by 0.5 ps KrF-excimer-laser pulses at 248 nm is reported. The onset of material removal from different film thicknesses (0.1, 0.3, 0.6 and 1.0 m) was measured in a laser ionization time-of-flight mass spectrometer by the amount of Ni atoms vs laser fluence. Significant amounts of metal atoms are already evaporated at laser fluences around 20 mJ/cm², a threshold up to 100 times smaller compared to the one for 14 ns pulses. In contrast to ns laser pulses, the ablation threshold for 0.5 ps pulses is independent of the film thickness. These results reflect the importance of thermal diffusion in laser ablation of strongly absorbing and thermally good conducting materials and prove that for ablation with short pulses, energy loss to the bulk is minimized.     

Detection of buried layers in silicon devices using LIBS during hole drilling with femtosecond laser pulses

Femtosecond laser micromachining together with Laser Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy (LIBS) allows us to drill precise hole in materials to internal buried layers as well as characterize the materials while drilling. We report detection of a metal layer buried deep inside silicon by creating an access hole through the semiconductor. We used 800 nm femtosecond laser pulses to carry out the drilling while monitoring the plasma emission with a spectrometer system. Higher drilling rates of 1 μm per shot were achieved using a Gaussian laser beam profile with peak fluences of 42 J/cm². Lower drilling rates of 30 nm per pulse with better accuracy could be achieved using lower intensity flat top beam profiles at fluences of 1.4 J/cm².     

Femtosecond laser near field ablation

The high field strength of femtosecond laser pulses leads to nonlinear effects during the interaction with condensed matter. One such effect is the ablation process, which can be initiated below the threshold of common thermal ablation if the excitation pulses are sufficiently short. This effect leads to structure formation, which is anisotropic because of the polarization properties of the near field and can result in pattern sizes below the resolution limit of light. These effects are explored by temporally resolved scattering methods and by post‐mortem analysis to show the non‐thermal and anisotropic nature of this process. The near‐field distribution of plasmon modes can be tailored to a large extent in order to obtain control of the pattern formation.     

Selective ablation of thin films with short and ultrashort laser pulses

Micromachining of CuInSe₂ (CIS)-based photovoltaic devices with short and ultrashort laser pulses has been investigated. Therefore, ablation thresholds and ablation rates of ZnO, Mo and CuInSe₂ thin films have been measured for irradiation with nanosecond laser pulses of ultraviolet and visible light and subpicosecond laser pulses of a Ti:sapphire laser. The experimental results were compared to the theoretical evaluation of the samples heat regime. In addition, the cells photo-electrical properties were measured before and after laser machining. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and energy dispersive X-ray (EDX) analyses were employed to characterise the laser-induced ablation channels. Using nanosecond laser pulses, two phenomena were found to limit the laser-machining process. Residues of Mo that were projected onto the walls of the ablation channel and the metallization of the CuInSe₂ semiconductor close to the channel lead to a shunt. The latter causes the decrease of the photovoltaic efficiency. As a consequence of these limiting effects, only subpicosecond laser pulses allowed the selective or complete ablation of the thin layers without a relevant change of the photo-electrical properties.     

Controlled process for polymer micromachining using designed pulse trains of a UV solid state laser

A flexible workstation equipped with a solid state laser operating at 266 nm wavelength was used to machine holes in polyethylene terephthalate, polyimide and polycarbonate. An optical pulse picker was employed to reduce the high repetition rates of the laser, while a breakthrough sensor was used to avoid over-drilling of through holes. For each material, different repetition rates and designed pulse trains were tested to improve feature quality and process efficiency. Although the three polymers had very different reactions at this wavelength they all showed an improvement in feature quality with decreasing repetition rate due to a reduction in thermal effects. Up to 10 kHz the average depth per pulse remained unchanged and afterwards a slight increase was observed but this was accompanied by large uncertainties. Bursts of pulses at 40 kHz inserted inside the low repetition rate pulse train reduced the drilling time and the amount of debris redeposited without affecting the feature quality. It was found that a number of cleaning pulses after perforation eliminates the heat affected zone around exits. Holes with entrance diameters below 20 μm and exit diameters as small as 2 μm were obtained with high repeatability.     

High-power Yb-doped continuous-wave and pulsed fibre lasers

High-power laser generation using Yb-doped double-clad fibres with conversion efficiencies in excess of 80% have attracted much attention during the last decade due to their inherent advantages in terms of very high efficiency, no misalignment due to in-built intracore fibre Bragg gratings, low thermal problems due to large surface to volume ratio, diffraction-limited beam quality, compactness, reliability and fibre-optic beam delivery. Yb-doped fibres can also provide a wide emission band from ～1010 nm to ～1170 nm, which makes it a versatile laser medium to realize continuous-wave (CW), Q-switched short pulse, and mode-locked ultrashort pulse generation for various applications. In this article, a review of Yb-doped CW and pulsed fibre lasers along with our study on self-pulsing dynamics in CW fibre lasers to find its role in high-power fibre laser development and the physical mechanisms involved in its generation has been described. A study on the generation of high-power CW fibre laser of 165 W output power and generation of high peak power nanosecond pulses from acousto-optic Q-switched fibre laser has also been presented.     

Comparison of pulse amplification performances in longitudinally pumped Ytterbium doped materials

Using a theoretical model, the amplification of laser pulse performances achievable with various Ytterbium doped longitudinally pumped materials is compared. The investigated materials have been separated into two categories: some of them seem to be well suited for diode pumping as they allow good extraction efficiency when pumped by low pump intensity and long pulses. For the others, high pump intensity even with short pulses is required for achieving good extraction efficiency and they can be efficient when pumped by laser. It appears that the classification of these host materials is different from the one set for CW or pulsed lasers.     

Laser processing for deposition of high Tc superconducting films

Model considerations are applied to investigate the process of pulsed laser deposition of high T_c superconducting films. At low power densities, heat conduction and evaporation above a thermal threshold energy dominate. Increase of the laser flux results in the generation of a dense plasma with a mass ablation flow away from the target. According to different wave lengths the relation of the energy density to the pulse duration is estimated. Very short light pulses above a threshold energy density favour the ablation of a stoichiometric mass flow from a multicomponent target and suppress evaporation according to different vapor pressures.     

An optimal process of femtosecond laser cutting of NiTi shape memory alloy for fabrication of miniature devices

The mechanical properties of NiTi shape memory alloy (SMA) components are sensitive to thermal influence during laser machining. To make the femtosecond laser cutting of NiTi material meet the strict fabrication requirements for miniature SMA devices with high precision, complex patterns and minimal heat affected zone (HAZ) along with high throughput, we report an optimal process of sideways-movement path planning in this article. Femtosecond laser processing of NiTi SMA using the fundamental wavelength of 775 nm from a Ti:sapphire laser along with its second and third harmonic irradiations were systematically investigated. We observed that the main impact of ultrashort laser pulse induced air breakdown on materials processing was beam widening. The laser beam at fundamental wavelength suffered less widening than its harmonic wavelengths. Femtosecond laser machining of metals is still basically a thermal mechanism. High ablation rates at higher laser fluences causes significant recast formation, while lower fluences resulted in better cutting quality at the expense of efficiency. The optimal process involving the method of sideways-movement path planning enables recast-free high-precision features at higher laser fluences with better throughput.     

A comprehensive study of the long pulse Nd:YAG laser drilling of multi-layer carbon fibre composites

The results of an extensive experimental study of the free running Nd:YAG laser drilling of a multi-layer carbon fibre composite, where adjacent layers have differently orientated fibres, are reported. For holes drilled with the laser operating in fixed-Q mode at 1064 nm, parallel sections of blind holes illustrating discontinuities in the hole size along a given section direction will be shown to occur at the interface between adjacent layers. An explanation for this effect is proposed. Detailed single pulse drilling characteristics will be presented illustrating the exit hole diameter as a function of pulse energy and material thickness. These characteristics illustrate a ‘stable' drilling regime in which the exit hole diameters are least sensitive to changes in pulse energy or material thickness and a less ‘stable' regime in which they are more strongly dependent on these parameters. Drilling characteristics will be given for two different beam qualities, illustrating the greater drilling depth and reduced hole size achievable with an improved beam quality. Finally holes drilled through a 2 mm thick sample of material with multiple pulses are considered. Size distribution curves for entrance and exit holes will be presented. The total energy required (number of pulses × pulse energy) to drill through 2 mm thick material will be reported as a function of pulse energy in stationary air and argon atmospheres and in a partial vacuum, illustrating a threshold energy which is dependent upon the drilling atmosphere. The threshold energies will be discussed with reference to plasma formation and the reactivity of the drilling atmosphere.     

Femtosecond laser ablation from dielectric materials: Comparison to arc discharge erosion

After explosive ablation from sapphire crystals by linearly polarised laser pulses, regular structures are observed on the bottom of the ablation pit. These structures do not comply with conventional ripple patterns. Instead, they more nearly resemble wickerwork, aligned perpendicular to the laser beam polarisation. A similar morphology is obtained by arc discharge erosion at AgCdO electrodes, suggesting that an explosive laser ablation may be characterised by high electric field effects and self organisation in the ablation craters.