Femtosecond nanomachining: theory and applications in biomedical research and analysis

Abstract

The nonlinear mechanisms of femtosecond laser damage allow tight control of ablation to precisely remove very small amounts of material, leaving holes as small as tens of nanometers wide. By serially targeting laser pulses in glass, a host of three dimensional nano- and microfluidic structures can be formed including nozzles, mixers, and separation columns. Recent advances allow the formation of high aspect ratio nanochannels from single pulses, thus helping address fabrication speed limitations presented by serial processing. Femtosecond nanomachining is enabling for a variety of applications including nanoscale devices for analytic separations, chemical analysis, and biomedical diagnostics.