IR and green femtosecond laser machining of heat sensitive materials for medical devices at micrometer scale

In medical device manufacturing there is an increasing interest to enhance machining of biocompatible materials on a micrometer scale. Obviously there is a trend to generate smaller device structures like cavities, slits or total size of the device to address new applications. Another trend points to surface modification, which allows controlling selective growth of defined biological cell types on medical implants. In both cases it is interesting to establish machining methods with minimized thermal impact, because biocompatible materials often show degradation of mechanical properties under thermal treatment. Typical examples for this effect is embrittlement of stainless steel at the edge of a cutting slit, which is caused by oxidation and phase change. Also for Nitinol (NiTi alloy) which is used as another stent material reduction of shape-memory behavior is known if cutting temperature is too high. For newest biodegradable materials like Polylactic acid (PLA) based polymers, lowest thermal impact is required due to PLA softening point (65 degrees C) and melting temperature (similar to 170 degrees C). Laser machining with ultra-short pulse lasers is a solution for this problem. In our work we demonstrate a clean laser cut of NiTi and PLA based polymers with a high repetition-rate 1030 nm, 400-800 fs laser source at a pulse energy of up to 50 mu J and laser repetition rate of up to 500 kHz.