1. Deep nonlinear ablation of silicon with a quasi-continuous wave fiber laser at 1070 nm
- Author
-
Logan G. Wright, James M. Fraser, Karen X. Z. Yu, and Paul J. L. Webster
- Subjects
Laser ablation ,Materials science ,Silicon ,business.industry ,Hybrid silicon laser ,medicine.medical_treatment ,Nonlinear optics ,chemistry.chemical_element ,Pulse duration ,02 engineering and technology ,021001 nanoscience & nanotechnology ,Ablation ,7. Clean energy ,01 natural sciences ,Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics ,010309 optics ,Optics ,chemistry ,Fiber laser ,0103 physical sciences ,medicine ,Continuous wave ,0210 nano-technology ,business - Abstract
We achieve high aspect-ratio laser ablation of silicon with a strong nonlinear dependence on pulse duration while using a power density 10(6) times less than the threshold for typical multiphoton-mediated ablation. This is especially counter-intuitive as silicon is nominally transparent to the modulated continuous wave Yb:fiber laser used in the experiments. We perform time-domain finite-element simulations of thermal dynamics to investigate thermo-optical coupling and link the observed machining to an intensity-thresholded runaway thermo-optically nonlinear process. This effect, cascaded absorption, is qualitatively different from ablation observed using nanosecond-duration pulses and is general enough to potentially facilitate high-quality, high aspect-ratio, and economical processing of many materials.
- Published
- 2013
- Full Text
- View/download PDF