Abstract
The unique characteristics of ultrafast lasers, such as picosecond and femtosecond lasers, have opened up new avenues in materials processing that employ ultrashort pulse widths and extremely high peak intensities. Thus, ultrafast lasers are currently used widely for both fundamental research and practical applications. This review describes the characteristics of ultrafast laser processing and the recent advancements and applications of both surface and volume processing. Surface processing includes micromachining, micro- and nanostructuring, and nanoablation, while volume processing includes two-photon polymerization and three-dimensional (3D) processing within transparent materials. Commercial and industrial applications of ultrafast laser processing are also introduced, and a summary of the technology with future outlooks are also given. Scientists in Asia have reviewed the role of ultrafast lasers in materials processing. Koji Sugioka from RIKEN in Japan and Ya Cheng from the Shanghai Institute of Optics and Fine Mechanics in China describe how femtosecond and picosecond lasers can be used to perform useful tasks in both surface and volume processing. Such lasers can cut, drill and ablate a variety of materials with high precision, including metals, semiconductors, ceramics and glasses. They can also polymerize organic materials that contain a suitable photosensitizer and can three-dimensionally process inside transparent materials such as glass, and are already being used to fabricate medical stents, repair photomasks, drill ink-jet nozzles and pattern solar cells. The researchers also explain the characteristics of such lasers and the interaction of ultrashort, intense pulses of light with matter.
Highlights
Materials processing using ultrafast lasers, lasers that emit light pulses shorter than a few tens of picoseconds, was first reported in 1987 by Srinivasan et al.[1], Kuper and Stuke.[2]
This review describes the characteristics of ultrafast laser processing and the recent advancements and applications of both surface and volume processing
Suppression of heat diffusion to the surroundings improves the spatial resolution for nanoscale processing.[7]. Another important aspect of ultrafast laser processing is that nonlinear absorption can induce strong absorption even in materials that are transparent to the ultrafast laser beam.[8,9]
Summary
Materials processing using ultrafast lasers, lasers that emit light pulses shorter than a few tens of picoseconds, was first reported in 1987 by Srinivasan et al.[1], Kuper and Stuke.[2]. Suppression of heat diffusion to the surroundings improves the spatial resolution for nanoscale processing.[7] Another important aspect of ultrafast laser processing is that nonlinear absorption (i.e., multiphoton absorption) can induce strong absorption even in materials that are transparent to the ultrafast laser beam.[8,9] Multiphoton absorption permits surface processing,[10] and three-dimensional (3D) internal microfabrication of transparent materials such as glass and polymers.[11,12,13,14] Davis et al.[11] and Glezer et al.[12] pioneered this field and demonstrated respectively optical waveguide writing and formation of nanovoid arrays inside glass in 1996. In the 2000s, it was determined that ultrafast laser irradiation at intensities near the ablation threshold forms nanoripple structures on various materials with periodicities much shorter than the wavelength.[22,23,24,25]
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