Microprocessing of glass by hybrid laser processing

Hybrid laser processing for precision microfabrication of glass materials, in which the interaction of a conventional pulsed laser beam and another medium on the material surface leads to effective ablation and modification, is reviewed. The main role of the medium is to produce strong absorption of the nanosecond laser beam by the materials. Simultaneous irradiation of the vacuum ultraviolet (VUV) laser beam, which possesses extremely small laser fluence, with the ultraviolet (UV) laser greatly improves the ablation quality and modification efficiency for fused (VUV-UV multiwavelength excitation processing). Metal plasma generated by the laser beam effectively assists high-quality ablation of transparent materials, resulting in microstructuring, cutting, color marking, printing and selective metallization of glass materials (laser-induced plasma-assisted ablation (LIPAA)). The detailed discussion described in this paper includes the ablation mechanism of hybrid laser processing.