Abstract

Femtosecond lasers are today routinely used for machining a wide range of materials on a micrometer scale with high precision, flexibility and versatility (real and/or imaginary part of the dielectric function), and miminal side effects [1,2]. The selective character of femtosecond laser micromachining is related to the dependence of the material modifications to the incident laser intensity which is extremely high (~ 10¹³ – 10¹⁴ W/cm²) while keeping the applied fluence moderate (~ 1 J/cm²). The selectivity and precision can be further enhanced by tailoring properties of the femtosecond laser pulse, like shaping in time and/or in space the electric field of the pulse, its polarization or other beam parameters (number of pulses, repetition rate, etc.).

© 2009 IEEE