Front-surface fabrication of moderate aspect ratio micro-channels in fused silica by single picosecond Gaussian–Bessel laser pulse

Xin Liu (1, 2, 3) , Nicolas Sanner (2) , Marc Sentis (2) , Razvan Stoian (4) , Wei Zhao (1) , Guanghua Cheng (1) , Olivier Uteza (2)

1 Xi’an Institute of Optics and Precision Mechanics
2 LP3 - Laboratoire Lasers, Plasmas et Procédés photoniques
3 UCAS - University of Chinese Academy of Sciences [Beijing]
4 LHC - Laboratoire Hubert Curien

Single-shot Gaussian-Bessel laser beams of 1 ps pulse duration and of ~ 0.9 μm core size and ~ 60 μm depth of focus are used for drilling micro-channels on front side of fused silica in ambient condition. Channels ablated at different pulse energies are fully characterized by AFM and post-processing polishing procedures. We identify experimental energy conditions (typically 1.5 µJ) suitable to fabricate non-tapered channels with mean diameter of ~ 1.2 µm and length of ~ 40 μm while maintaining an utmost quality of the front opening of the channels. In addition, by further applying accurate post-polishing procedure, channels with high surface quality and moderate aspect ratio down to a few units are accessible, which would find interest in the surface micro-structuring of materials, with perspective of further scalability to meta-material specifications.

Domains: Engineering Sciences [physics]; Optics / Photonic

Xin Liu, Nicolas Sanner, Marc Sentis, Razvan Stoian, Wei Zhao, et al.. Front-surface fabrication of moderate aspect ratio micro-channels in fused silica by single picosecond Gaussian–Bessel laser pulse. Applied physics. A, Materials science & processing, 2018, 124 (2), pp.206. ⟨10.1007/s00339-018-1634-1⟩. ⟨ujm-01823403⟩