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Femtosecond laser micromachining in transparent materials

Nature Photonics volume 2, pages 219–225 (2008)Cite this article

Abstract

Femtosecond laser micromachining can be used either to remove materials or to change a material's properties, and can be applied to both absorptive and transparent substances. Over the past decade, this technique has been used in a broad range of applications, from waveguide fabrication to cell ablation. This review describes the physical mechanisms and the main experimental parameters involved in the femtosecond laser micromachining of transparent materials, and important emerging applications of the technology.

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Figure 1: Timescale of the physical phenomena associated with the interaction of a femtosecond laser pulse with transparent materials.
Figure 2: Bandgap dependence of the threshold fluence for femtosecond laser micromachining by pulses centred at a wavelength of 800 nm with a duration of 100 fs.
Figure 3: Photonic applications of femtosecond laser micromachining.
Figure 4: Example applications of femtosecond micromachining in biology, material processing and data storage.
Figure 5: Examples of microfluidic and rapid prototyping applications of femtosecond micromachining.

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to acknowledge C. R. Mendonca, J. Dowd, M. Haider-Syed and T. Baldacchini for input on the manuscript. The authors are supported by the Army Research Office under contract W911NF-05-1-0471.

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  1. Department of Physics and School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Harvard University, 9 Oxford Street, Cambridge, 02138, Massachusetts, USA

    Rafael R. Gattass & Eric Mazur

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Gattass, R., Mazur, E. Femtosecond laser micromachining in transparent materials. Nature Photon 2, 219–225 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1038/nphoton.2008.47

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