Micromachining along a curve: Femtosecond laser micromachining of curved profiles in diamond and silicon using accelerating beams

Amaury Mathis (1) , François Courvoisier (1) , Luc Froehly (1) , Luca Furfaro (1) , Maxime Jacquot (1) , Pierre-Ambroise Lacourt (1) , John Michael Dudley (1)

1 FEMTO-ST - Franche-Comté Électronique Mécanique, Thermique et Optique - Sciences et Technologies (UMR 6174)

We report femtosecond laser micromachining of micron-size curved structures using tailored accelerating beams. We report surface curvatures as small as 70 μm in both diamond and silicon, which demonstrates the wide applicability of the technique to materials that are optically transparent or opaque at the pump laser wavelength. We also report the machining of curved trenches in silicon. Our results are consistent with an ablation-threshold model based on calculated local beam intensity, and we also observe asymmetric debris deposition which is interpreted in terms of the optical properties of the incident accelerating beam.

Domaines: Optique / photonique; Optique [physics.optics]

Amaury Mathis, François Courvoisier, Luc Froehly, Luca Furfaro, Maxime Jacquot, et al.. Micromachining along a curve: Femtosecond laser micromachining of curved profiles in diamond and silicon using accelerating beams. Applied Physics Letters, 2012, 101, pp.071110. ⟨10.1063/1.4745925⟩. ⟨hal-00944520⟩