Ultrafast laser processing of glass and sapphire using nondiffracting beams
Résumé
Ultrafast lasers used for micro and nano machining now offer the reliability and performance for massproduction. In the particular field of transparent materials processing, a key capability of ultrashort pulses is that theycan drill and modify matter from inside the material itself. We demonstrate that using appropriate beam shaping, it ispossible to produce voids or nano-channels using a single pulse in even the hardest materials, and this has recentlyled to major advances in the field of stealth dicing, which is a non-ablative technique used to cleave and separatetransparent materials at extremely high processing speeds. We report novel recent developments where Bessel beamhave been used to create cracks and cleave sapphire, but also where symmetry has been broken to enhancecleaveability of laser-processed glass.