The femtosecond pulse laser:: a new tool for micromachining

Ultraprecision laser micromachining has excited vivid attention in various industrial fields and in medicine owing to the rapid progress in laser design capable of emitting powerful pulses with durations of less than 1 ps Material damage achieved on the targets is determined to a major extent by the hear affected zone (HAZ). Femtosecond laser treatment leads to about one order of magnitude smaller HAZs compared to nanosecond laser machining. The threshold fluences for ablation decrease significantly and the structuring quality can be enhanced by use of ultrashort laser pulses. This behavior was investigated for a wide range of different materials, like metals, semiconductors, dielectrics and composites. In the present paper, laser ablation results of this laboratory with pulses of 300 fs duration at 612-620 nm wavelength and a repetition rate of a few Hertz are reviewed.