Ultrashort-Pulse Laser Ablation

Abstract

Picosecond- and femtosecond-laser ablation has been proved to be a powerful technique for the patterning of both thermally high-conductance materials and wide-bandgap materials. Because both the influence of heat conduction within the material and screening of the incident laser light are strongly diminished with picosecond pulses, and can even be ignored with femtosecond pulses, material removal is very localized and requires less energy. With ultrashort pulses, ablation mechanisms that are of minor relevance or not at all present in nanosecond-laser ablation become increasingly important.