Ultrafast laser materials processing has undergone an important change with the development of non-diffracting beams. These beams enable overcoming many of the difficulties usually encountered with standard Gaussian-beam focusing in materials. We review the techniques of non-diffracting and accelerating beam shaping that generates lines, tubes or curved segments of focused light on distances that exceed the Gaussian Rayleigh range by several orders of magnitude. We review the benefits and applications of nondiffracting beams for laser micro- and nano-processing in the general context of materials processing with ultrashort pulses in the filamentation regime. We highlight applications on ultra-high aspect ratio nano-drilling and direct laser processing along curves.

https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-02392845/document

[INVITED] Ultrafast laser micro- and nano-processing with nondiffracting and curved beams: Invited paper for the section : Hot topics in Ultrafast Lasers

Focusing ultrafast laser pulses inside a transparent material induces localized permanent structural modifications. Using these permanent structural modifications, one can produce photonic devices and micro-channels inside the bulk of a transparent material in three-dimensions. By virtue of localized melting and resolidification in materials, joining or welding is achieved between pieces of the same or different materials. This welding technique for transparent materials using ultrafast laser pulses is also reviewed along with applications to hermetic sealing. The mechanisms and applications of ultrafast laser micro-processing in transparent material are discussed.

[INVITED] Ultrafast laser micro-processing of transparent material

We report single-pass cutting of strong transparent glass materials
 of 700 μm thickness with a speed up to 270 mm/s using single-shot nanostructuring technique exploiting picosecond, zero-order Bessel beams at laser wavelength of 1030 nm. Particularly, we present results of a systematic study of cutting of tempered glass which has high resistance to thermal and mechanical shocks due to the inhomogeneous material properties along its thickness, and homogeneous glass that identify a unique focusing geometry and a finite pitch dependency, for which cutting with high quality and high reproducibility can be achieved. These results represent a significant advancement in the field of high-speed cutting of technologically important transparent materials.

High-speed laser-assisted cutting of strong transparent materials using picosecond Bessel beams

We produce and characterize high-angle femtosecond Bessel beams at 1300-nm wavelength leading to nonlinearly ionized plasma micro-channels in both glass and silicon. With microjoule pulse energy, we demonstrate controlled through-modifications in 150-μm glass substrates. In silicon, strong two-photon absorption leads to larger damages at the front surface but also a clamping of the intensity inside the bulk at a level of ≈4 × 1011 W cm−2 which is below the threshold for volume and rear surface modification. We show that the intensity clamping is associated with a strong degradation of the Bessel-like profile. The observations highlight that the inherent limitation to ultrafast energy deposition inside semiconductors with Gaussian focusing [Mouskeftaras et al., Appl. Phys. Lett. 105, 191103 (2014)] applies also for high-angle Bessel beams.

/pdf/limitations-to-laser-machining-of-silicon-using-femtosecond-42qxud62fl.pdf

Limitations to laser machining of silicon using femtosecond micro-Bessel beams in the infrared

We report on a one-step method for cutting 250-µm-thick quartz plates using highly focused ultrashort laser pulses with a duration of 200 fs and a wavelength of 1030 nm. We show that the repetition rate, the scan speed, the pulse overlap and the pulse energy directly influence the cutting process and quality. Therefore, a suitable choice of these parameters was necessary to get single-pass stealth dicing with neat and flat cut edges. The mechanism behind the stealth dicing process was ascribed to tensile stresses generated by the relaxation of the compressive stresses originated in the laser beam focal volume during irradiation in the bulk material. Such stresses produced micro-fractures whose controlled propagation along the laser beam path led to cutting of the samples.

https://www.mdpi.com/2072-666X/11/3/327/pdf

One-Step Femtosecond Laser Stealth Dicing of Quartz.

Taking advantage of the nonlinear laser-material interaction, femtosecond lasers can process transparent materials internally on micro- or nanoscales, whose applications include fabrication of micro-opti- cal waveguides and fluidics, as well as stealth dicing of glass, ceramics, and semiconductor materials. A femtosecond Bessel beam has a long invariant transverse intensity profile up to several millimeters with a width of a few microns. Such characteristics allow the materials process- ing to be completed without moving the beam focusing points as in the case of the Gaussian beam. An experimental femtosecond Bessel beam microprocessing system is built up to investigate the glass internal modification characteristics, such as the width variation and aspect ratios of modification areas. The residual stresses in the irradiated area of glass after modification are also studied using micro Raman spectrum. Finally, an application to thin glass panel cutting is demonstrated by the process of internal modification and breaking. The glass panel is well cut with the chipping on the breaking edge <1 μm. © 2014 Society of Photo-Optical

Chun Jen Gu

Papers

Internal modification for cutting transparent glass using femtosecond Bessel beams