Laser applications

Glass is brittle and chips or cracks under thermal load. Femtosecond pulses deposit energy faster than heat can spread, so glass can be drilled, milled and cut with smooth walls, scribed kerf-free, or modified for selective chemical etching.

Femtosecond pulses machine metal without melting it, so cuts come out burr-free with only a small heat-affected zone. The same beam textures surfaces to change their properties and marks metals black or in color, with no inks and no chemical additives.

Polymer conducts heat poorly, so a longer pulse melts or chars the edge. Femtosecond pulses remove material before the heat spreads, so cuts come out clean. Focused inside a resin, the same pulses solidify it point by point into 3D structures.

Ceramics, semiconductors and organic materials each fail under heat in a different way. Femtosecond pulses leave almost no residual heat, so ceramic is milled, silicon and GaAs wafers are cut clean, and circuits are written onto a dielectric.