Laser scribing has many advantages over mechanical scribing including higher throughput and yield, lower maintenance cost and smaller scribe width. In particular, UV laser, as compared to IR or green, is a better laser source due to its higher energy absorption by most semiconductor materials, leading to  a  more  effective  material  removal  rate.  Its  natural  high  photon  energy  also  offers  cold  material  processing: the smaller heat-affected-zone (HAZ) material interaction produces little thermal damage. Moreover, UV laser beam can be focused into much smaller beam spot than IR or green laser beam. System  integrator  could  integrate  the  laser  system  with  an  automation  machine  for  specific  application.Technology Features & SpecificationsA  diode-pumped  solid-state  UV  laser  system  prototype  has  been  developed,  with  an  output  power  of up to 10 W at 30 kHz. The system is cooled by a thermal electric high flow rate chiller to ensure good stability and reliability output from the laser head. A flexible electronic control was developed, to enable the  system to  interface with  automation  systems  for  a  variety  of  applications.  The  laser  parameters can be changed from the touch screen panel in front of the power supply unit as well as through  PC  communication.  A  scan  head  is  integrated  with  the  laser  system  to  offer  flexibility  in  material processing. A user friendly laser marking software is also implemented in the system.Potential ApplicationsThe system can be used in various applications such as PCB cutting, wafer scribing and sapphire-substrate-based LED scribing, and other potential applications such as cutting on thin-film copper and gold, indium-tin oxide (ITO) removal, patterning on glass, photo ablation of organics and direct marking on most metals and polymers.

Market Trends and OpportunitiesThis  technology  will  benefit  local  system  integration  companies  related  to  semiconductor  or  photovoltaic. The developed Diode-Pumped Solid State (DPSS) UV laser will have higher conversion efficiency  with  optimized  harmonic  generation,  and  better  beam  quality  compared  to  current  laser  system. With good beam quality and short wavelength, the laser beam can be focused to a very small spot size in microns. Novel harmonic generation design solves the lifetime issue of high-power UV laser and provides excellent nonlinear conversion efficiency. The laser output can be further split into multiple beams to improve the processing speed.Customer BenefitsCurrent systems are based on extra-cavity harmonic generation technique, which needs to focus the IR  and  green  beams  tightly  into  harmonic  crystal.  The  crystal  needs  to  be  indexed  to  another  new  position  every  200  hours.  The  system  has  been  designed  with  intra-cavity  harmonic  generation  of  355  nm  laser  wavelength  which  does  not  require  indexing  of  the  nonlinear  crystals,  hence  will  not  interrupt  the  production  run  and  affect  the  laser  pointing  stability  and  performance  accuracy

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