Other materials

Ceramics crack, semiconductors chip and organic materials char, each under a different kind of thermal load. Femtosecond laser pulses are over before heat leaves the focal volume, so ceramic is milled, silicon and GaAs wafers are cut clean, organics are machined without burnt edges, and dielectric surfaces are activated for metallization.

Material processing
Material processing Glass Metal Polymer Other materials
Other materials

Heat-sensitive organic material processing

Organic materials are sensitive to heat: warping and burnt edges appear as soon as the cut zone warms up. Femtosecond pulses are over before significant heat transfers into the material’s lattice, so heat-sensitive organics can be cut accurately and cleanly.

A FemtoLux laser was used to cut thin organic materials for medical applications. With 350 fs pulses and high scanning speeds, the material was cut at up to 100 mm/s without significant thermal effects: the measured kerf widths were 14.38 µm and 30.24 µm, and the cut edges show no charring.

Cut edge of a heat-sensitive organic material.

Cut edge of a heat-sensitive organic material.

Courtesy of FTMC.

Manufacturing examples

Cut with a 30.24 µm kerf in a thin organic material.

Cut with a 30.24 µm kerf in a thin organic material.

Courtesy of FTMC.

Cut with a 14.38 µm kerf in a thin organic material.

Cut with a 14.38 µm kerf in a thin organic material.

Courtesy of FTMC.

Similar applications

50 µm depth groove formation in ceramic.
Femtosecond laser formation of grooves in ceramic

Ceramic is hard and brittle: mechanical processing presses on it with large forces and can crack the substrate. Femtosecond laser pulses form grooves without mechanical contact. Grooves 30, 50 and 70 µm deep were scribed at speeds up to 44.1 mm/s, and the 343 nm wavelength reduced the heat-affected zone from 8.23 µm to 4.88 µm.
Optical 3D profilometer image of milled alumina squares in different operational modes.
Ceramic processing with GHz burst

Femtosecond lasers mill ceramics precisely but slowly. GHz bursts raise the throughput: trains of pulses at GHz intra-burst repetition rates split one high-energy pulse into many smaller ones. With 92 pulses per burst, alumina milling throughput rose from 6.39 mm³/min in single-pulse mode to 10.38 mm³/min.
SEM image of a trench milled in GaAs under a layer of water.
Femtosecond processing of GaAs in air and water

Milling GaAs in ambient air leaves a band of debris redeposited along the trench walls. Under a layer of water the same process cuts deeper and cleaner: trench depth rose from 58 µm to 105 µm and the redeposition band shrank from 34 µm to 7.6 µm. Ablation efficiency was higher in all three regimes tested.
Cutting of FZ-Si wafer.
Femtosecond laser cutting of FZ-Si wafer

Mechanical dicing follows silicon’s crystallographic cleave planes, so diced chips come out with straight edges only. Femtosecond pulses cut FZ-Si wafers along curved contours instead: a 0.4 mm float-zone wafer was cut with a low heat-affected zone and an undamaged bottom surface.
Copper circuit patterns on polyimide (PI).
Selective Surface Activation Induced by Laser (SSAIL)

SSAIL writes copper circuits directly onto dielectric surfaces: an ultra-short pulse laser draws the pattern, chemical activation follows it, and electroless plating deposits metal only on the lasered areas. Developed by FTMC and Akoneer, the process reaches trace widths down to 1 µm on PC/ABS, PMMA, PET, FR-4, Al2O3 ceramic, fused silica and silicon.
All applications