Fused silica ablation by double femtosecond laser pulses with variable delays

Glass processing is a subject of high interest for electronics, watch and consumer electronics industries. The femtosecond laser has unique capacity to produce a high-quality surface or bulk modification in dielectrics transparent materials thanks to nonlinear absorption. Temporal pulse shaping seems to be a smart and flexible solution to further increase the efficiency of this tool. Indeed, since the lifetime of free electrons in the conduction band is about few picoseconds, it is possible to improve ablation efficiency of dieletrics using a double pulse laser irradiation. The principle is to use the first pulse to promote electrons into the conduction band meanwhile the second one induces the ablation of the target material. This study deals with double femtosecond laser pulse radiation of fused silica in order to tune both ablation threshold and removal rate. The time delay between the two pulses is set from 0 to 5 ps owing to a delay line. The results are discussed in terms of optical transmission and ablation efficiency. Our ultrafast laser operates at 1030 nm and has a pulse duration of 480 fs.