Ultrafast lasers—including femtosecond and picosecond lasers—are ideal for precision micromachining applications, such as processing semiconductors, flat panel displays and various thin-film materials.

Applications may include:

Precision micromachining

Black marking of stainless steel or aluminum

Surface micro-structuring and texturing

Multilayer polymer film cutting

Battery and thin metal foil cutting

Sapphire LED wafer scribing

Thin film ablation for solar, PV or flat panel displays

Precise marking of metals, polymers or glass

Micromachining of ceramics

ULTRASHORT PULSE PROCESSING

Thanks to short pulse widths and high repetition rates, femtosecond lasers excel in applications that have traditionally utilized nanosecond lasers.

When laser pulses are a few picoseconds or less, material interaction occurs so quickly the heat doesn’t have time to travel outside the event zone. With the right laser, optics and settings, this eliminates the heat-affected zone in material processing applications—enabling you to:

Etch metals and ceramics with the same high level of detail found in acid etching

Eliminate the post-processing associated with nanosecond lasers

Cut thin metals with no raised edges on top or bottom surfaces

Process materials with no discoloration halos around cuts or engravings

Femtosecond lasers depend less on the wavelength than nanosecond lasers for processing materials like polymers, glass and ceramics due to the multiphoton absorption of ultrashort pulses. Multiphoton absorption can bridge large band gap energies that normally require the high photon energies of short wavelength lasers. Short wavelengths may still be required even with ultrashort lasers if small spot sizes are required. These lasers also typically have high repetition rates—achieving high processing speeds.