Abstract
Lasers are well suited for micromanufacturing by ablating nearly all the material within the focal spot before any significant heat conduction or mass flow takes place, thus enabling precise machining with little thermal damage. In this letter, the results of an idea of using nonlinear liquids as lenses to fabricate micron-sized features are reported. Our research showed that transmitting the laser pulse through a transparent condensed medium such as carbon disulfide that has very high intensity-dependent nonlinear refractive index creates a lens and focuses the beam. Results on 316 stainless steel showed a two-fold decrease in the hole size and reduced taper when liquid optics were used over traditional solid optics. Polarization effects were also substantially reduced. The beneficial effects of liquid optics are explored.
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