Optics and Lasers in Engineering 73 (2015) 89122

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Optics and Lasers in Engineering

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/optlaseng

Review

Laser Beam MicroMachining (LBMM) A review

Sanjay Mishra a,n, Vinod Yadava b
a
Department of Mechanical Engineering, I.T.S. Engineering College, Greater Noida, UP 201308, India
b
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Motilal Nehru National Institute of Technology, Allahabad, India

art ic l e i nf o a b s t r a c t

Article history: The use of short and ultrashort laser pulses for micromachining application is an emerging technology.
Received 1 January 2015 Laser Beam MicroMachining (LBMM) has revolutionized many industries by providing innovative
Received in revised form solutions in numerous industrial micro-engineering applications. High-intensity short or ultrashort
22 March 2015
laser pulses are powerful thermal energy source for creating micro-features in wide range of materials.
Accepted 23 March 2015
These lasers can precisely ablate various types of materials with little or no collateral damage. An
overview of LBMM is given so that we can obtain a current view of capabilities and tradeoffs associated
Keywords: with LBMM of sub-micron size. The fundamental understanding of ultrafast laser ablation process has
Laser Beam MicroMachining (LBMM) been elucidated and the various research activities performed with nanosecond, picosecond and
Short and ultrashort lasers
femtosecond, lasers have been discussed to understand the physical mechanisms and the critical
Laser ablation
experimental parameters involved in the LBMM. The critical analysis of various theoretical and
Two temperature model
experimental models used to describe the performance analysis of LBMM has been elaborated so that
we can identify the relevant principles underlying the process.
& 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Contents

1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90
2. Laser Beam MicroMachining (LBMM) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90
2.1. Types of lasers used in LBMM. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90
2.2. Interaction of short and ultra-short lasers with different materials . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90
2.2.1. Metals. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91
2.2.2. Insulators and semiconductors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91
2.2.3. Dielectric and ceramics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92
2.2.4. Optically transparent material. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92
2.2.5. Polymers. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92
2.3. Mechanism of laser ablation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92
2.3.1. Laser ablation with nanosecond (ns) laser . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93
2.3.2. Laser ablation with picosecond (ps) laser. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93
2.3.3. Laser ablation with femtosecond (fs) laser . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93
2.4. Methods of LBMM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94
3. Laser system for micromachining . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94
4. Application of LBMM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94
4.1. Biomedical applications. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94
4.2. Microelectronics. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94
4.3. Photonics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95
4.4. Precision engineering . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95
5. Major areas of research in LBMM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95

n
Corresponding author. Tel.: 91 9650178116; fax: 91 1202331037.
E-mail address: sanjaymnnit74@gmail.com (S. Mishra).

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.optlaseng.2015.03.017
0143-8166/& 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
90 S. Mishra, V. Yadava / Optics and Lasers in Engineering 73 (2015) 89122

5.1. LBMM using ns lasers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95

5.1.1. LBMM using excimer lasers. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95
5.1.2. LBMM using CO2 lasers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97
5.1.3. LBMM using Copper Vapor Lasers (CVLs) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98
5.2. LBMM using solid state lasers. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100
5.2.1. Metals. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100
5.2.2. Ceramics and semiconductors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102
5.2.3. Polymers. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104
5.3. LBMM using ber laser . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104
5.4. LBMM using ps lasers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106
5.5. LBMM using fs lasers. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107
5.5.1. Metals. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107
5.5.2. Semiconductors and shape memory alloys. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112
5.5.3. Ceramics. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114
5.5.4. Polymers. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115
6. Modeling and optimization of LBMM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116
6.1. Experimental models. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116
6.2. Analytical models . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116
6.3. Articial Intelligence (AI) models . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118
7. Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119

1. Introduction
communication network, optical data memory and biological opt-
Laser radiation has a number of unique properties like high ical chips.
intensity of electromagnetic energy ux, high monochromaticity and In this paper the fundamental understanding and detailed
high spatial and temporal coherence. Laser can travel as a very narrow explanation of the nature of short and ultrashort laser pulse
beam and the property of high spatial and temporal coherence makes interaction with various types of materials has been described.
it highly directional so that it can be focused upon small areas with An effort has been made to critically analyze the various research
very high radiance [1]. As a direct energy source laser can enable aspects performed in the eld of LBMM so that we can gain an
deposition, removal and alteration of material property through insight into the physical mechanisms and the effect of relevant
changes in its conguration [2]. The advantage of using laser as a parameters on the geometry, dimension and surface morphology
thermal energy source for material processing is due to its efcient of laser micromachined parts.
control of depth and amount of energy. Laser beam is appropriate for
microtechnology due to its high lateral resolution, low heat input, and
high exibility. 2. Laser Beam MicroMachining (LBMM)
Laser Beam Machining (LBM) using long pulses has been used
since long by focusing laser beam to a selective portion of material to 2.1. Types of lasers used in LBMM
create a desired feature on or internal to the substrate. Various LBM
process commonly used are Laser Beam Drilling (LBD), Laser Beam In LBMM both short and ultrashort laser pulses obtained from gas
Cutting (LBC), Laser Beam Turning (LBT) and Laser Beam Grooving or solid lasers are used for selective removal of material. A laser ppulse

(LBG). LBM generally relies on the linear optical absorption and plasma is called as ultrashort pulse when the thermal diffusion depth ( 4at
formation mechanisms which often lead to heat deposition, micro- where a is the thermal diffusivity and t is the diffusion time) is equal to
cracks and small collateral damage to the surroundings. Laser Beam or less than the optical penetration depth [3]. A wide variety of lasers,
MicroMachining (LBMM) involves the fabrication of microfeatures which provide wavelengths from deep ultraviolet (D-UV) to mid-
with nanometer (nm) tolerances. It utilizes the properties of ultrashort infrared (M-IR) are used for LBMM. The wavelength conversion of IR
laser to acquire an exceptional degree of control in generating laser is possible by passing the light through proper non-linear optical
microfeatures internal to the materials without any collateral damage crystals like lithium niobate or beta barium borate. The third and
to the surroundings. In LBMM laser energy is deposited into small fourth harmonics of laser in the neodymium family i.e. Nd:YAG, Nd:
volumes by multiphoton nonlinear optical absorption followed by YLF and Nd:YVO4 are in UV range. Table 1 shows some representative
avalanche ionization. Heat diffusion time is in the order of nanosecond lasers in the wavelength range from deep UV to mid-IR which are
to microsecond (ms) time scale whereas the electronphonon coupling extensively used for microfabrication applications.
time of most materials is in the range of picosecond to nanosecond.
When laser energy is deposited at a time scale which is much shorter 2.2. Interaction of short and ultra-short lasers with different
than both the heat transport and the electronphonon coupling no materials
collateral damage takes place. In LBMM, the feature size depends on
beam quality (M2  1), wavelength and f-number of lens used for The absorption coefcient () of the material controls the
focusing [3]. Due to nonlinear optical fabrication process, LBMM is decay of laser intensity with depth inside the material. The
used to create features size smaller than the diffraction limit inside the absorption coefcient depends on the temperature and wave-
substrate at various depths. Now-a-days the manufacturing industries length but at constant , decay of laser intensity with depth is
are using LBMM in various elds like micro-optics, micro-electronics, given by BeerLambert Law as, Iz I 0 e  z where I 0 is the
micro-biology and micro-chemistry. It can be used to fabricate 3-D intensity just inside the surface after considering reection losses.
submicron sized structures, miniature photonic components, read The depth at which the intensity of the laser drops to 1/e value of
only memory chips and hollow channel waveguides used in optical its initial value at the interface is known optical penetration or
 S. Mishra, V. Yadava / Optics and Lasers in Engineering 73 (2015) 89122 91

Table 1
Type of lasers used in microfabrication application.

Type of laser Laser material Wavelength Pulse length Frequency

Solid state laser Nd:YAG (second harmonic) 532 nm 10010 ns 50 Hz

Nd:YAG (third harmonic) 355 nm
Nd:YAG (fourth harmonic) 266 nm
Nd:YVO14 1064 nm 2.87.9 ps 84 MHz to 77 GHz
Nd:GdVO34 1053 nm 37 ps 100 MHz
Nd:BEL4 1070 nm 2.97.5 ps 250 MHz to 20 GHz
Nd:LSB5 1062 nm 1.6208 ps 177240 MHz
Nd:glass 1054 nm 7 ps
Nd:VAN6 750870 nm
Nd:YLF7 10471053 nm 1.537 ps 76 MHz to 2.85 GHz
Yb:YAG 1030 nm 340730 fs 3581 MHz
Yb:glass 10251082 nm 5861 fs 112 MHz
Yb:GdCOB8 1045 nm 90 fs 100 MHz
Yb:KGW 1037 nm 176 fs 86 MHz
Ti:sapphire 750880 nm 6150 fs 15 MHz to 2 GHz
Cr:LiSAF9 800880 nm 12220 s 82200 MHz
Cr:LiCAF10 800820 nm 20170 fs 9095 MHz
Cr:LiSGaF11 830895 nm 14100 fs 71119 MHz
Cr:LiSCaF12 860 nm 90 fs 140 MHz
Cr:Forsterite 1.211.29 mm 1478 fs 81100 MHz
Cr:YAG 1.52 mm 44120 fs 81 MHz to 1.2 GHz
Fiber lasers 1064 nm 100 ns 2050 Hz
Diode lasers 0.8 mm
Microchip lasers 1064 nm Less than 100 ps 100 kHz

Gas laser ArF 193 525 ns 11000 Hz

KrF 248 260 ns 1500 Hz
XeCl 308 1250 ns 1500 Hz
XeF 353 0.335 11000 Hz
CO2 laser 10,600 200 ms 5 Hz
Copper vapor lasers 611578 30 420 Hz

absorption depth () given by 1/. Laser radiation is absorbed

either by exciting free electrons or by electronic or vibrational
transitions in atoms, ions, or molecules. Electronic or vibrational
states may be localized or non-localized and may be related to the
solid surface, defects and impurities.

2.2.1. Metals
In metals, electronic excitations can take place by both intra
and inter band transitions. The frequency-dependent complex
dielectric constant can dened as

L D 1
Fig. 1. Schematic of energy ow in laser material interaction [4].
where L is the contribution due to lattice vibrations, D is the
intraband or Drude term and I is the term due to interband and it reveals characteristics related to the lattice properties. The
transitions. Both conduction- and valence-band electrons may large absorption coefcient in metals is responsible for extremely
participate in laser excitations. The conduction-band electrons small absorption depth known as skin depth.
participate through a free electron whereas the valence band
participates through an interband response that has a threshold
corresponding to the energy separation between the valence and
conduction bands. Electrons in the conduction band can interact 2.2.2. Insulators and semiconductors
with photons and further increase their energy by intraband The optical response of insulators and semiconductors involves
absorption through the Inverse Bremsstrahlung phenomenon. both electronic and ionic contributions to the dielectric function.
In metals, optical absorption is dominated by the free electrons The refractive part of the dielectric function of non-metallic solids
and energy is subsequently transferred to lattice phonons by dominates away from electronic resonances while the absorptive
collisions as shown in Fig. 1 [4]. Plasma frequency (p) which component dominates near resonances. Since insulators and semi-
relates the electron pdensity
of metal to its optical properties is conductors do not contain adequate number of free carriers in the
given by P e=2 N e =me o where Ne is the electron density in conduction band, electronic conduction do not take place. Thus,
the conduction-band and o is the dielectric constant. At frequen- optical absorption in laser-irradiated semiconductors and insulators
cies lower than p absorption is dominated by free-electron creates electronhole pairs instead of electron heating. Materials
behavior. When frequency of radiation increases above the plasma are characterized by their bulk bandgap energy Eg, which denes the
frequency, absorption and reectivity both decrease because the energy required by an electron in the highest energy valence state
electrons in the metal cannot screen the electric eld of the light. to cross the gap up to the lowest level in the conduction band.
At high frequencies the contribution of free electron is negligible Photons with energy below the material's band gap will not be
92 S. Mishra, V. Yadava / Optics and Lasers in Engineering 73 (2015) 89122

absorbed. Above and below their bandgap energies, insulators and 2.2.5. Polymers
semiconductors have similar optical properties. In polymers the laser ablation may take place due to several
For radiation with photon energy h (where h is the Planck mechanisms like photochemical, photothermal, photophysical or
constant and is the frequency) greater than Eg, the radiation combination of all these. In photochemical mechanism the elec-
solid interaction is dominated by single-photon interband transi- tronic excitation is responsible for direct bond breaking, whereas
tions. If h is less than the band gap Eg, the optical properties of in photothermal ablation the electronic ablation is thermalized on
these materials are controlled by the lower energy intraband ps time scale and the thermal bond breaking may take place. In
electronic transitions and by excitation of vibrational modes photophysical process both thermal and non-thermal processes
within the lattice. The presence of impurities and defects can play vital role and two different bond breaking energies for ground
strongly enhance the coupling between laser radiation and insu- state and electronically excited state are applied.
lator materials.

2.3. Mechanism of laser ablation

2.2.3. Dielectric and ceramics
In case of dielectric the free electron is generated due to strong Laser ablation is one of the most efcient physical methods for
eld ionization. Once the free electron has been generated, micro-fabrication. In this method the ablation of a target (mostly
electronelectron collision occurs and thus the impact or ava- solid) is achieved by an intense laser radiation, yielding to an
lanche ionization takes place. The dielectric materials have large ejection of its constituents and to the formation of nanoclusters
band-gap and optical breakdown process is required to deposit and nanostructures. Laser ablation as shown in Fig. 2 [8] leads to a
sufcient amount of energy in these materials. Since these material removal rate (ablation rate) typically exceeding one-tenth
materials have low linear light absorption therefore the use of of the monolayer per pulse, resulting in the modication of the
non-linear absorption is necessary. The laser energy is deposited surface shape or composition at mesoscopic length scales. At long
into the focal volume and the materials get ionize owing to the pulsewidth the linear absorption is the main absorption mechan-
high intensity of ultrashort laser. Due to laser induced breakdown ism for opaque materials, while the nonlinear absorption mechan-
the target material in the focal volume is transformed into ism dominates at ultrashort pulsewidth. For transparent materials
absorbing plasma and thus converting the optically transparent the absorption takes place through laser induced optical break-
materials into opaque for the incoming laser wavelength. The down where a transparent material is rst transformed into
breakdown threshold of a material largely depends on its ioniza- absorbing plasma which absorb the laser energy to heat the
tion potential, the pulse duration and the wavelength of the laser workpiece [9].
pulse [5]. The use of ultrashort laser pulse create positive charged The ablation of materials occurs above certain threshold
near the surface region of the dielectric due to which coulomb uence. The magnitude of threshold uence not only depends
explosion with high kinetic energy take place. Coulomb explosion on the absorption mechanism, material properties, microstructure,
releases very fast ions with narrow velocity distribution thus surface morphology, the presence of defects, but also on laser
generating atomically smooth surfaces. This mechanism can be parameters such as wavelength, pulse duration etc. Typical thresh-
exploited for the processing of dielectric when the pulse width of old uences lie between 1 and 10 J/cm2 for metals, 0.5 and 2.0 J/
laser is in sub-ps range [6]. cm2 for inorganic insulators and 0.1 and 1 J/cm2 for organic
Ceramics are composed of particulate of varying sizes (few materials. When multiple pulses are used for laser ablation, the
microns to tens of microns) and therefore at low intensities the ablation thresholds may decrease due to incubation effect. Incuba-
laser irradiation gets scattered but at high laser intensity the above tion phenomenon is generally observed in LBMM with repetitive
theory of ablation is valid for ceramics. pulses. Laser uence with sub-threshold value has the ability to
irreversibly modify the material and therefore the study of
incubation is important in LBMM. The relation between single
2.2.4. Optically transparent material pulse threshold F th 1 and multi-pulse threshold F th N is given by
In case of optically transparent material, the material removal F th N F th 1N  1 , where indicates degree of incubation. 1
takes place due to electric breakdown effect of electric eld. The shows the absence of incubation. can be obtained from the slope
electric eld strength at the exit is higher than the electric eld of the graph between log NF th N and log N. Since defects
strength at the entrance surface. When a laser beam transmit from facilitate resonant multiphoton transition, it plays a vital role in
an optically less dense medium to high dense medium, a phase the incubation phenomenon
shift of 1801 occurs at the entrance surface but no phase shift takes Above the ablation threshold, thickness or volume of material
place at the exit surface for the reected beam. The ratio of electric removed per pulse typically shows a logarithmic increase with
eld strength at the exit Ee and at the entrance ET is determined uence according to the BeerLambert law. Depending on the
by the following equation: characteristics of particular material and laser processing para-
Ee 2n meters such as wavelength, uence, and pulse length, a number of
2
Et n 1

where n is the refractive index of the medium.

From Eq. (3), the ratio of laser intensity at exit I e and entrance I t
can be determined.
 2
Ie Ee
3
It Et

For material having refractive index greater than one, it is

easier to process the material from the rear surface. The locally
damaged location due to laser interaction can absorb thermal
energy from the incoming pulses and thus plasma induced laser
processing is initiated [7]. Fig. 2. Laser matter interaction of pulsed laser beam [8].
 S. Mishra, V. Yadava / Optics and Lasers in Engineering 73 (2015) 89122 93

mechanisms are responsible for laser ablation. At low uences, the distribution of surface carriers. But ultrashort pulses (o1 ps) are
ablation occurs due to photothermal mechanisms in which mate- capable of freeing bound electrons via multi-photon ionization
rial evaporation and sublimation occur. At high laser uence, (MPI) and have precise value of laser induced damage threshold
heterogeneous nucleation of vapour bubbles leads to normal boil- [9]. When ultrafast fs laser strikes the materials, rapid thermaliza-
ing. If material heating is too rapid to reach its thermodynamic tion within the electron gas occurs and due to electronelectron
critical temperature then explosive boiling may take place due scattering FermiDirac temperature distribution is achieved. The
to rapid homogenous nucleation and expansion of vapour. When electron energy produced by this thermal diffusion induces lattice
the excitation time is shorter than the thermalization time in shape on the surface of material. The breaking of lattice bond and
the material, non-thermal photochemical ablation mechanisms material expansion take place with the release of energy and
can occur. nally the lattice shape is removed from the surface of the
In LBMM the material removal is accompanied by a highly material as illustrated in Fig. 3 [10]. In fs lasers the electron
directed plume ejected from the irradiated zone. At high laser phonon coupling is responsible for the transfer of heat from the
intensities the electric eld of the laser pulse may exceed the electronic system to the lattice. The greater value of electron
threshold for optical breakdown and thus the ablated material is phonon coupling constant ensures a higher rate of heat transfer
transformed into plasma. Laser ablation with ultra-short laser between electrons and the lattice. For fs laser pulses the deposi-
pulses lead to extreme non-equilibrium situations. The particles tion time of energy is much shorter than the mechanical relaxa-
leaving the liquid during evaporation establish an equilibrium tion time dened as M Lp Le =C M , where Lp is the optical
distribution of velocity in a small region above the surface called penetration depth, Le is the electron energy transfer depth and C M
the Knudsen layer. Above the Knudsen layer the vapour plume is the speed of rarefaction wave in the solid target. It indicates that
expands rapidly thereby compressing the ambient gas and form- if the duration of pulse is shorter than the time it takes to initiate a
ing a shock wave front. collective motion of atom within the absorbed volume, a very fast
heating of the surface takes place due to which a very high
2.3.1. Laser ablation with nanosecond (ns) laser temperature is reached at constant density. The energy absorption
In ns laser ablation the photo thermal process causes the at the top surface of the target is very high so direct solid to vapor
material ejection and the generation of nanoparticles. Since the transition occurs and the heat does not get dissipated out of the
rate of energy deposition is slow therefore it couples with beam spot radius because the pulse duration is smaller than the
the electronic and vibrational mode of the workpiece and thus relaxation time of electrons [2].
heating the target material. At low laser uence the estimated Absorption of fs laser takes place due to photo ionization and
depth through which the laser energy will be absorbed effectively avalanche ionization. In photo ionization several photons collide
is given by the thermal penetration depth. In the regime of with an electron resulting in its excitation. When the laser
thermal penetration depth the ablation process is dominated by intensity is above 1013 W/cm2, multiphoton ionization may take
thermal evaporation. When the laser uence is near the threshold place where several photons of same wavelength with energy h
value, ionization of vapour plume takes place by direct heating of simultaneously hit the bound electrons. But when the laser
laser radiation but when laser intensity is higher than gas ioniza- intensity is above 1015 W/cm2, the electron gets free by tunneling
tion threshold the ionization phenomenon occurs due to optical through deformed valence due to the electric eld generated by
breakdown process. When the laser irradiance is greater than the laser. Avalanche ionization takes place when the free electrons
1011 W/cm2 and surface temperature is equal to thermodynamic which were produced by multiphoton ionization get heated by the
critical point, phase explosion phenomenon occurs where the laser pulse and collide with the electrons from the valence band
matter changes from an overheated liquid to a mixture of vapour producing multiple free electrons. When the free electrons reach
and liquid droplets. Dense plasma with high temperature and the critical density, plasma formation take place after which the
pressure is created at the end of the laser pulse due to which the ablation of materials is initiated.
molten droplets eject at supersonic velocity [2]. The expelled The volume of material ablated by a laser pulse is important for
liquid gets resolidied into thin lms thereby altering the topo- achieving ne resolution machining. The area of the focused laser
graphy at the rim and surrounding areas of the ablated region. spot and the heat penetration are the most signicant factors that
affect the laser ablated volume of material. The diameter of the
focused laser spot can be obtained from Eq. (2)
2.3.2. Laser ablation with picosecond (ps) laser
Material removal during ultra-short laser ablation takes place
4 f M 2
primarily due to critical point phase separation (CPSS) mechanism. 20 4
d
During this process, no appreciable change in material density
occurs until it reaches the maximum temperature. After reaching where is the wavelength of laser radiation, f is the focal length of
the maximum temperature the density begins to decrease and objective lens, M is the beam quality and d is the entering beam
ablation will take place for the material cells whose expansion diameter. The above equation indicates that the short pulse
trajectories have entered the unstable zone near the critical point
whereas the mass below it will condense back on the target. The
separation temperature serves as the threshold value and its
location can be found by the heat diffusion equations. During
the laser ablation, the laser energy is rst absorbed by the free
electrons in the metal and due to electron phonon coupling this
energy is transferred to the lattice. At the surface there is direct
solidvapor or solidplasma transition but deep inside the metal
liquid phase is present.

2.3.3. Laser ablation with femtosecond (fs) laser

For laser pulses longer than 10 ps, precisely dened laser
induced damage threshold does not exist due the non-uniform Fig. 3. Laser ablation by femtosecond laser [10].
94 S. Mishra, V. Yadava / Optics and Lasers in Engineering 73 (2015) 89122

wavelength is desirable for ne resolution machining and uniform interference pattern. The interference pattern is projected on the
processing efciency [9]. substrate and the micromachined pattern corresponding to the
The ablated hole diameter as a function of laser uence is intensity prole of the interference pattern is obtained with
given by structure size of 50300 nm [12].
 

D2 220 In 5
th 3. Laser system for micromachining
where th is the ablation threshold.
The ablation rate per pulse for low and high laser uence is A typical laser micromachining system is shown in Fig. 5. It
respectively given by Eqs. (6) and (7). consists of a laser source to emit ultra-short pulses and a
! programmable galvanometer scanner to guide the beam accu-
rately at high speed over the target. The laser beam is switched
L  1 In 6
th with a fast galvo-shutter. A beam expansion telescope is used to
increase the diameter of the beam. The beam is guided through a
where L is the ablation rate per pulse,  1 is the optical penetra-
quarter-wave plate to obtain circularly polarized laser beam on the
tion depth and th is the threshold uence whereas for high laser
target so that the same absorption properties may be obtained
uence the ablation can be expressed as
! around the machined area. The total pulse energy is attenuated by
rotating half wave plate followed by a linear polarizer. The laser
L In 7 beam is focused with a focusing lens and a circular aperture is
th
positioned before the focusing lens to eliminate the low intensity
where L is the ablation rate per pulse, is the electron heat portion of the spatially-distributed laser beam.

diffusion depth and th is the threshold uence.

2.4. Methods of LBMM 4. Application of LBMM

LBMM is used to create lateral structures of submicrometer LBMM can be used for the precise machining of all metals as
range with three different methods [11]. The laser ablation of a shown in Fig. 6, but precision cutting of very thin and delicate
material depends on its optical and thermal properties like metal foils is gaining popularity due to its wide application in
reectivity, linear absorption coefcient, heat diffusion coefcient micro- and nanotechnology application. It can perform discrete
etc. The LBMM can be performed by (i) direct writing, (ii) mask machining of silicon wafers or microstructuring of on-wafer
projection patterning and (iii) patterning by interference of laser. devices. Similarly it can also be used for high quality micro-
As shown in Fig. 4, in the direct writing the laser beam machining of different optical materials such as Gallium Arsenide
irradiates the substrate and we obtain the desired pattern either (GaAs), lithium niobate, lithium tantalite, indium phosphide etc.
by translating the laser beam or by translating the substrate. The Selective micro-machining of multiple-material samples can be
important parameters in this technique are working distance, size done and use of separate lasers to process different layers in
of focal point and depth of focus. Automation of the movement of complex devices is also possible. LBMM can be used for the precise
workpiece or laser beam can be done by integrating CAD software machining of uoropolymers which are used for the development
and micropositioning equipment. This technique can be used for of miniature lab-on-chip technologies. Ultra-short laser pulses can
cutting, drilling and scribing of materials. In some cases, combina- be utilized for the laser smoothing of synthetic CVD diamond
tion of galvanometer controlled scanning mirrors and at-eld which is used in IR optical application, detectors, sensors and
lens are used. thermal management systems [13].
The mask projection technique is ideal for excimer laser and in
this technique, the laser is used to illuminate a given feature on 4.1. Biomedical applications
mask. The resolution of features created by this technique depends
on the mask and the projection system. One of the prime LBMM is used for fabrication of stents which are basically hollow
requirements of this technique is that the laser beam should be tubes with mesh like walls, micromachining of holes in catheters
homogenous so that uniform intensity of laser beam can be and patient monitoring probes. Micro-Electro-Mechanical-Systems
obtained over the entire mask area. Some of the desirable features (MEMS) which are widely used in implantable pressure sensors and
of this technique are ne resolution, ne depth control, excellent drug delivery system can be fabricated by LBMM. As shown in Fig. 7
reproducibility and the ability to cover large sample areas. [14] LBMM can be used to create textured surfaces that support cell
In interference technique, the primary laser beam is splitted adhesion and it is the preferred method for rapid prototyping of
into several single beams which are then superimposed to create microuidic channels used in drug delivery devices. Fig. 8 [14]
shows formation of microuidic channels in polyester. Embedded 3-
D microuidic channels can be fabricated by exposure of photo-
sensitive glass to fs laser. Integration of optical, electrical and
chemical sensing elements with microuidic channels can be done
by LBMM. Integrated microuidic channels which contain optical
waveguides that help in sensing the biological molecules in uids
owing through microchannels can be fabricated by LBMM.

4.2. Microelectronics

The LBMM is not only used for drilling in chip packages and
printed wiring boards but also for drilling narrow holes in
polymers used for microcircuit boards, texturing of magnetic bard
Fig. 4. Conguration of a direct-write laser machining system with an XY stage [30]. disks, video heads and diamond lms. It is also adopted for direct
 S. Mishra, V. Yadava / Optics and Lasers in Engineering 73 (2015) 89122 95

Fig. 5. Schematic for picosecond laser drilling [82].

devices without damage to adjacent parts can be performed with

ultra-fast laser used in LBMM. It is an excellent way to get high
tolerances slits and holes for precision products, manufacture of
stencils and masks for high precision application.

5. Major areas of research in LBMM

In the following section an attempt has been done to elucidate

the research work carried out using ns, ps and fs lasers for the
LBMM of different materials. Most of the research in LBMM is
concerned with techniques for creating 3D micro-structures of
high aspect ratio, obtaining high resolution in different types of
materials and study of changes of surface morphologies due to
laser interaction.

Fig. 6. 470 mm diameter, 130 mm height nickel intravascular rotor microturbine [14].
5.1. LBMM using ns lasers
manufacture of polymer microdevices and for the production of
molds from which metallic microstructures may be formed by LBMM using ns lasers can be divided into two sub-categories:
replication. LBMM can perform patterning of high resolution (i) LBMM using gas lasers (excimer laser, CO2 laser, and copper vapor
electronic circuits in metal layers on variety of substrates. Preci- laser) and (ii) LBMM using diode pumped solid state lasers [3].
sion repair of high value electronic devices by laser isolation and
removal of defects, fabrication of high quality deposition, printing 5.1.1. LBMM using excimer lasers
and transfer masks is also possible with LBMM. A promising Excimer lasers as shown in Fig. 9 [8] are used for patterning,
technique of using lasers for fabricating submicron patterns of cutting and structuring of variety of materials like ceramics,
organic, inorganic and biological materials consists in the forward glasses and polymers. These are pulsed gas lasers which produce
transfer of a compound from a transparent support onto a suitable UV radiation in the range of 351193 nm depending upon the
substrate. This method is known as Laser Induced Forward composition of gas. Most useful wavelength for direct ablative
Transfer (LIFT). LIFT is a promising technique for the fabrication micromachining is 248 nm (KrF) and 193 nm (ArF). It is widely
of micro-devices such as capacitors, resistors, chemosensors, used in micromachining because we can control the depth of
biosensors, power sources, thin-lm transistors (TFTs), organic machining by controlling the number of incident laser pulses [15].
TFT arrays and organic light-emitting diode (OLED) displays. Excimer lasers have broad spatial prole and poor mode structure.
Mask projection, Beam overlap and half tone mask are the
4.3. Photonics micromachining technique for creating 3-D structures with exci-
mer lasers. Figs. 10 and 11 show the components fabricated by
Short pulse laser is appropriate for the production of optical mask projection and the half tone mask method respectively.
microstructures such as microlenses, waveguides and prisms. Excimer lasers can be used to produce structure with a depth
LBMM is used to create micro-features in silica optical bers, resolution of 0.1 mm and spatial resolution of 1 mm or better.
patterning, scribing and dicing of processed optical wafer and Pantelis and Psyllaki [16] investigated the Excimer laser micro-
substrates. Precision micromachined placement structures such as machining of CMSX2 and TA6V superalloys. It was found that the
grooves and wells for optical devices can also be fabricated laser micromachining of these Ni- and Ti-based super-alloys shows
with LBMM. surface de-oxidation and degreasing below the threshold energy
density while above this value ablation and remelting phenomena
4.4. Precision engineering take place. The effect of number of laser pulses on the depth of
crater is shown in Fig. 12. In case of CMSX2 the cone shaped craters
High speed drilling of meshes in metal foils with holes size as are formed whereas rectangular-shaped craters are formed in TA6V
small as 2 m, in situ trimming of machined and pre-assembled alloy. Tanshoff et al. [17] have explored the feasibility of converting
96 S. Mishra, V. Yadava / Optics and Lasers in Engineering 73 (2015) 89122

Fig. 7. Microoptical surfaces fabricated by KrF excimer laser [14].

Fig. 8. Microuidic channels in polyester [14].

Fig. 9. Four-axis excimer laser micromachining system [8].

the excimer lasers into a complete workstation by integrating them

into a universal machining concept. A preprocessor has been Fig. 10. A ber clamp machined into polymer using a mask projection technique [15].
developed to calculate the overall volume of material to be removed
from computer-aided-design (CAD) data.
Ricciardi et al. [18] used 100 W excimer laser for micromachin- ratio of nished hole and laser uence. Hanemann et al. [20]
ing of metals, ceramics and polymers. In case of polymers introduced a new approach for the rapid fabrication of micro-
phenomena of photo dissociative and direct ablation of material structured parts of polymers and composites. They combine the
occurs. The use of excimer laser for micromachining of ceramics laser micromachining process for the fabrication of mold with UV
produces very low roughness with no microssuring along the cut light induced reaction injection molding technique for rapid
edge. In case of metal, undesired deposition of residual materials replication of the microcomponents. Fig. 14 shows laser fabricated
occurs along the edge of the drilled hole. Lazare et al. [19] have mold inserts and adapters used in photomolding. Peging et al.
reported the results of microdrilling in transparent polymers with [21] demonstrated that rapid fabrication of microcomponents
KrF laser. It was shown that high aspect ratio hole (up to 600) can made of polymers and composites is possible by fabricating the
be obtained in polymers with intense UV laser microbeams. The rst prototype by direct patterning of the workpiece with excimer
polymers having high absorption produce high resolution with laser after which the mold inserts are made by laser assisted
low ablation rate. Fig. 13 shows the relation between the aspect micromachining with Nd:YAG or KrF laser. Finally the replication
 S. Mishra, V. Yadava / Optics and Lasers in Engineering 73 (2015) 89122 97

Fig. 14. Laser fabricated mold inserts and adapters for use in photomolding, hot
embossing and injection molding machinery [20].

Fig. 11. SEM of polycarbonate machined through a half tone mask [15].
point thereby causing explosive phase change. Kim and Xu [25]
investigated the UV laser ablation and bonding techniques of
polymers for fabrication of microuidic devices on polymers using
KrF laser having wavelength of 248 nm. Technique of mask
patterning and direct laser writing were used. It was observed
that the mask patterning is rapid to fabricate repeated micro-
structures whereas direct laser writing provides rapid changes of
patterns. High pulse repetition rate and a low scanning velocity
produce smooth pattern. They demonstrated the technique of
Spin-on-Glass (SOG) process and IR laser bonding process for
assembly operation.
Desbiens and Masson [8] studied the micromachining of silicon
(Si), piezoceramics (PZT), pyrex and silicon carbide (SiC) using ArF
excimer laser having wavelength of 193 nm, pulse width of 5 ns,
6.5 mJ pulse energy and 300 Hz repetition rate. They found that
Fig. 12. Depth attained during the excimer laser micromachining of CMSX2 and precision of 15 mm can be obtained with laser uence of less than
TA6V alloys [16]. 20 J/cm2 on all the above materials except silicon due to the
occurrence of recast and melting. Anisotropic wet etching and
Deep Reactive Ion Etching (DRIE) are more appropriate for micro-
machining of silicon at this wavelength. Lazare and Tokarev [26]
investigated the suitable experimental conditions required to drill
high aspect ratio micro-holes in pure polymers. They found that an
aspect ratio of 600 can be obtained for 1520 mm hole diameter by
using low divergence laser with high brilliance.
The applicability of laser-induced back-side dry etching (LIBDE)
for the processing of fused silica of 1-mm thickness coated with a
100 nm thick aluminum layer using a ns dye laser (pumped by KrF
Fig. 13. Aspect ratio as a function of uence [19]. excimer laser) has been studied by Hopp et al. [27]. They demon-
strated that laser etching at a surface adsorbed layer (LESAL) and
is performed with UV light induced reaction injection molding laser-induced back-side wet/dry etching (LIBWE/LIBDE) are the
process. newest indirect method of laser etching at surface. In these
Ghantasala et al. [22] have investigated the viability of using techniques as illustrated in Fig. 16 the transparent targets are
Excimer Ablation Lithography (EAL) method for the microstructur- contacted with liquid (LESAL and LIBWE) or solid (LIBDE) layers,
ing of SU-8 photoresist (a light sensitive material). The ablation which can absorb and transform the laser pulse energy so that
characteristics of SU-8 molds were investigated for different etching can take place. LESAL and LIBWE are multipulse processing
prebake temperatures (at 90, 110, 120 and 2000 1C). It was whereas LIBDE is a single pulse method. LIBDE is more efcient
observed that etch rate variation with laser uence follow a than LESAL and LIBWE for a single laser pulse.
pattern similar to the polyamide. The effect of increasing the
number of shots on the etching phenomena is demonstrated in
Fig. 15. Kancharla and Chen [23] demonstrated that biodegradable 5.1.2. LBMM using CO2 lasers
microdevices can be conveniently fabricated by laser microma- CO2 laser emit light at a wavelength of 10.6 mm in the far
chining technique. A XeCl excimer laser was used to fabricate infrared region (FIR) of the electromagnetic spectrum. The lasing
microchannels whereas the frequency quadrupled Nd:YAG laser medium is produced by a combination of carbon dioxide, nitrogen
was used to create microhole array in biodegradable polymeric and helium [28]. Compact RF-excited waveguide CO2 lasers are
materials like poly-D-lactic acid (PDLA) and polymer poly-vinyl well suited for microprocessing of ceramics, polymers. The usual
alcohol (PVA). operating wavelength of high power CO2 lasers is 10.6 mm. For RF-
Xu and Willis [24] studied the heat transfer and non- excited waveguide CO2 lasers with output at 9.4 mm are also
equilibrium phase change during laser ablation of nickel with ns available by controlling waveguide loss in the laser resonator.
laser pulse. Experimental results show that surface evaporation Presby et al. [29] explored the viability of using CO2 waveguide
takes place at the laser uence of 4 J/cm2 but after this the metal laser for the fabrication of microlenses on single mode optical
reaches metastable state and the temperature reaches to critical bers. It was observed that CO2 laser creates more consistent lens
98 S. Mishra, V. Yadava / Optics and Lasers in Engineering 73 (2015) 89122

Fig. 15. Optical micrographs showing the effect of shots per area at constant uence. (a) 240 Shots, (b) 400 shots, (c) 1200 shots, and (d) 10,000 shots [22].

curvature and the short laser pulse with high intensity can be used
to melt microlens tip to specic radii as well to micromachine the
microlenses by ablating very small area (1 mm2) of glass from ber
surface. Cheng et al. [30] have used CO2 laser scriber to engrave
poly methyl methacrylate (PMMA) substrate. Trench width of
140 mm with aspect ratio of more than 7 has been obtained by
employing direct-write laser micromachining technique to fabri-
cate microuidic chip. They found that the smoothness of initially Fig. 16. Experimental arrangement for laser-induced back-side dry etching [27].
rough machined surface can be increased either by thermal
annealing processes as shown in Fig. 17 or by incorporating
organic functional groups. Snakenborg et al. [31] investigated the thickness of the carbonized layer around the drilled microvias of
use of CO2 gas laser for the fabrication of microuidic devices in epoxy-glass printed wiring board was investigated by Takeno et al.
polymers. The effect of velocity power and the number of passes [36]. It was observed that due to heat accumulation around the
on the depth of microuidic channel has been explored. Fig. 18 drilled area the increase of pulse frequency increases the thickness
shows the effect of velocity on channel depth. It was found that of carbonized layer.
infra red (IR) micromachining is fast and exible for production of
polymer microuidic systems and channels with a depth of about
225 mm can be obtained with width varying between 223 and 5.1.3. LBMM using Copper Vapor Lasers (CVLs)
305 mm. Similarly Shi et al. [32] demonstrated that 3D micro- CVLs operate in the visible region (510.6578.2 nm) and have
channel system in PMMA can be fabricated by using CO2 laser wide application in research and industry [37]. It produces green
along with 3-axis platform having micron resolution movement. and yellow light from a mixture of copper vapor and helium or
An optical conguration to generate a dual focus from a single neon and the laser action takes place due to high energy electrons
laser beam was demonstrated by Tan and Venkatakrishnan [33] to and neutral copper atoms. CVL emits high power (50500 kW),
process thick silicon substrate. The use of dual focus as shown in short pulses at (25 ns), high pulse frequency (250 kHz). One of
Fig. 19 increases the ionization effect and therefore it improves the the basic features of CVL is to produce high beam quality at very
efciency. Fig. 20 illustrates the effect of single focus and dual high average power. It can produce diffraction limited beam
focus laser beam on the dicing speed. quality with top hat or Gaussian prole unlike in solid state laser
Chung et al. [34] demonstrated a novel technique for micro- where we can generate diffraction limited beam with Gaussian
machining of pure silicon using CO2 instead of Nd:YAG and prole only. The light of CVL is more strongly absorbed in metals
excimer laser. They found that pure silicon do not absorb CO2 than IR lasers and thus it produce deep holes with a small heat
laser due to its long wavelength but when silicon was put on the affected zone. The incorporation of certain new features such
top of glass material,CO2 laser can etch the silicon, and a hole of frequency doubling, active power stabilization and ber beam
525 mm deep has been obtained by them. Effects of processing delivery through small core ber has increased the reliability and
parameters in CO2 laser microdrilling of 1 mm thick steel plate was usability of CVL [38].
explored by Guoquan and Tongyu [35]. They found that the laser Glover et al. [39] demonstrated that high beam quality fre-
peak power and the focal position signicantly affect the hole quency double CVL can enhance the material removal rate per
dimension. The effect of pulse duration and pulse frequency on the pulse of polymers. They showed that at very high frequency the
 S. Mishra, V. Yadava / Optics and Lasers in Engineering 73 (2015) 89122 99

Fig. 17. SEM pictures showing (a) the rugged interior surface of the trench after laser machining and (b) smooth surface after thermal annealing [30].

UVCVL can give 100 times faster production than the excimer achieved with diameters in the range 5200 m. CVL was used by
laser. Illy et al. [40] investigated the effect of pulse frequency Farlow et al. [41] for the micromachining of 13 piezocomposite
generated by frequency double CVL system on the material transducers so that its efciency can be enhanced by avoiding the
removal rate during the micromachining of 75 mm thick glycol inter-pillar resonances which deteriorate the transducer's perfor-
modied polyethylene terephthalate (PRTG). The etch rate per mance. A kerf width of 13 mm was obtained in 170 mm thick 13
pulse was measured by varying the pulse frequency in the range of piezocomposite transducer.
0.7515 kHz. It was observed that at low laser uence the material Coutts [42] proposed a double pass amplier conguration so
removal rates vary linearly with the pulse repetition rate and that low power oscillators can be use to control high power
when a sufcient number of laser pulses had interacted with the ampliers. In this conguration a single low power copper vapor
substrate the material removal rate increases remarkably at very oscillator is used to seed a double pass CVL amplier with high
high pulse frequency. Knowles [38] demonstrates that CVL can amplier extraction efciency. High power output with at-top
produce micro-structures and microfeatures with excellent qual- far-eld intensity prole can be obtained by using step-index
ity. It was observed that CVL is the only viable tool to produce optical ber between oscillators and amplier. This beam was used
excellent results with a combination of high power, short pulses, for high speed percussion drilling of 100 mm diameter holes with
visible radiation and diffraction-limited beam quality. Holes as low heat affected zone. The quality of the drilled hole was as good
small as 1.5 m can be drilled and tolerances of 70.25 m can be as the quality of hole drilled by the laser trepanning method. A CVL
100 S. Mishra, V. Yadava / Optics and Lasers in Engineering 73 (2015) 89122

Fig. 20. Comparison between single and dual focus dicing [33].

parameters. They found that crater depth is a more reliable

parameter to control the dimensional aspects because it is more
dependent on the pulse energy than the crater diameter. It was
Fig. 18. Inuence of change of velocities on channel depth [31]. observed that an increase in pulse energy by 11.4 times increases
the crater diameter by 1.85 times and crater depth by 4.1 times.
Jackson and Neill [45] studied the processing of 0.2 mm thick M2
tool steel using laser pulses of 1,064,532 and 355 nm wavelengths.
It was shown that the processing rate and the formation of recast
layer depend on the wavelength and intensity of laser beam. At a
wavelength of 1064 nm extensive recast layer with ow phenom-
ena within the melt was observed indicating a poor coupling of
laser with the material. Even though formation of recast layer
occurs at wavelength of 532 nm and 355 nm but ow structure
characteristics are not present. An etch rate of 5 mm/pulse and
1 mm/pulse was respectively obtained with wavelength of 355 nm
and 1064 nm.
Fig. 19. Optics for generating dual focus [33]. Tunna et al. [46] investigated the effect of different wave-
lengths while interacting with aluminum. Experimental results
of 511/578 nm wavelength combined with a computer controlled show that etch rate of 50 mm/pulse and 10 mm/pulse was obtained
galvo head was used for laser micromachining of 304 stainless at wavelength 355 nm and 1064 nm, respectively. Reduction in
steel by El-Bandrawy et al. [43]. It was observed that with spatially processing wavelength reduces the proportion of laser pulse
ltered beam the quality of micromachining increases. The abla- absorbed in the plasma thereby increasing the rate of machining.
tion volume and HAZ are directly proportional to the laser power It was observed that the taper in holes can be reduced by using a
density for low to medium laser powers. The ablation depth and beam of at top intensity prole. Fig. 21(a) and (b) illustrates the
surface roughness were directly proportional to power density and relation between average etch depth per pulse (mm) and spot
inversely proportional to the center-to-center pulse overlap. diameter (mm) for two different wavelengths whereas Fig. 22
shows the effect of processing uence and wavelength on average
etch depth per pulse. In order to enhance the machining speed
5.2. LBMM using solid state lasers
through efcient ablation, the use of double pulse technique has
been proposed by Forsman et al. [47]. They found that this
Most solid-state lasers emit radiation in the spectral region
technique helps us to obtain high aspect ratio holes with sig-
ranging from 400 nm to 3 mm. Frequency tripled diode pumped
nicant increase of material removal rate by heating the ejected
Nd:YAG lasers have good optical absorption and high ablation
particle so that redeposition of ablated material does not take
efciency. These lasers ablate the materials with high quality due
place. Pulse delays of less than 30 ns provide the above benet but
to good beam quality. Solid-state host materials may be broadly
increasing the pulse delays beyond 30 ns is not benecial.
grouped into crystalline solids and glasses. Fiber lasers are special
A new experimental technique based on optodynamic process
cases of glass lasers and are usually separately classied from bulk-
as shown in Fig. 23, where the shock wave generated during the
based solid-state lasers due to their distinct features such as
laser beam drilling was detected by piezoelectric transducer for
exible wave-guiding structures. Among many rare-earth-doped
real time determination of the depth of laser drilled hole under
solid-state lasers, neodymium-doped lasers such as Nd:YAG lasers,
pulsed laser irradiation has been demonstrated by Stafe et al. [48].
Nd:YVO4 lasers and ytterbium-doped lasers such as Yb:YAG and
It was observed that the drilling process is more efcient when
Yb:silica ber lasers are of high importance due to their excellent
materials with high thermal coefcients and the laser with small
lasing properties and pulsed operation capability.
wavelength is used for processing. Fig. 24 shows that the depth of
hole increases as a nonlinear function of the consecutive laser
5.2.1. Metals pulses and after approaching a threshold value the depth of crater
The effect of laser pulse energy on the geometric quality of the do not increase even after a large increase in the number of laser
micromachined parts in terms of accuracy, precision and surface pulses. The dependence of threshold uence on the thickness of
quality has been investigated by Bordatchev and Nikumb [44]. The material and crossing angle of Bessel beam which is an axially
statistical methods including pattern recognition analysis were condensed beam with micron size focal spot and a deep focal
employed to analyze the effect of pulse energy on geometrical length has been investigated by Matsuoka et al. [49]. Fig. 25 shows
 S. Mishra, V. Yadava / Optics and Lasers in Engineering 73 (2015) 89122 101

Fig. 21. Variation in entrance hole diameter of the percussion drilled hole (0.2 mm thick aluminum) at (a) 355 nm and (b) 532 nm [46].

Fig. 22. Average etch depth per pulse as a function of processing uence and
processing wavelength [46].
Fig. 24. Dependence of the shock wave propagation time on the number of
consecutive laser pulses during laser drilling [48].

Fig. 23. Real time determination and control of the laser drilled hole depth.
Fig. 25. Schematic of Bessel beam generation with an axicon [49].
(a) Experimental set up and (b) scheme of optodynamic real time method for
determination of depth (h) [48].

the schematic of Bessel beam generation with an axicon. Micro- uence burr formation may occur. The effect of different sized
drilling was performed on austenitic stainless steel sheet of supersonic microgas jets produced by nozzles having throat
thickness 20 mm and the authors found that for the same thick- diameter of 200, 300 and 500 mm for percussion drilling of
ness, the threshold uence increases with the increase of crossing 200 mm thick 316L stainless steel has been investigated by Khan
angle. Fig. 26 depicts that a Bessel beam with small threshold et al. [51]. Air and oxygen were used as assist gas and the drilling
uence can even produce a deep hole with small hole taper due to performance was compared to drilling in ambient conditions.
low energy propagation loss in the hole. DPSS Nd:YAG laser having wavelength of 355 nm was used for
Shin et al. [50] investigated the micromachining of thin lms experimentation. It was reported that for the same laser uence as
multilayered with metal and polymers by using 355-nm DPSS Nd: shown in Fig. 27 the use of assist gas jets generally reduces the
YVO4 laser. SrinavasanSmricBabu (SSB) model which considers etch rates but increases the hole diameter compared to ambient
the photochemical and photothermal effects was used to deter- conditions. Fig. 28 shows that minimum recast formation was
mine the ablation depth. It was observed that in case of copper obtained with 200 mm nozzle using air as assist gas due to high
surface, only expansion of the material take place if the laser pressure gradient at the edge of the hole. The use of oxygen as
uence is lower than the threshold energy but at higher laser assist decreases the etch rate due to plasma shielding. The use of
102 S. Mishra, V. Yadava / Optics and Lasers in Engineering 73 (2015) 89122

Fig. 26. Dependence of average ablation rate on sample thickness. (a) Bessel beam and (b) focused beam with a bi-convex lens [49].

Fig. 27. Average etch rate per pulse with different laser uence. (a) Ambient atmospheric condition and with air jets and (b) oxygen gas jets [51].

supersonic gas jet enhances the quality of holes by removing the for the fabrication of micro-grooves on biomedical materials like
recast layer but at the same time it reduces the etching rate. Ti6Al4V have been investigated by Fasasi et al. [54]. The effect of
Dietrich et al. [52] investigated the effect of different assist using Gaussian beam prole instead of top hat prole was studied
gases like oxygen, argon and helium on Laser Beam Percussion and effort was made to analyze the effect of pulse frequency, scan
drilling of stainless steel with temporal and spatial superposed speed and wavelength on the depths and width of microgrooves. It
laser radiation of ms and ns pulse durations. They found that was observed that UV laser can create microgrooves of dimensions
superposed laser radiation provides additional optical energy but that promote cell integration and contact guidance without any
the effect of this optical energy is negligible when argon or helium microcracks in heat-affected-zone.
is used as assist gas. The use of oxygen increases the drilling speed
due to the increase in combustion energy and change in the 5.2.2. Ceramics and semiconductors
absorptivity of surface. The depth obtained with helium is low Feasibility of using Nd:YAG laser for fabrication of high density
compared to argon due to its high thermal conductivity. The microvias in thick lm and green tape dielectrics at a speed of
accurate measurement of transient temperature of workpiece 150220 vias/s was evaluated by Ambra et al. [55]. They found that
generated during Laser Beam MicroMachining is vital for under- the drilling speed depends on the coordination of laser pulsing
standing the complex nature of laser material interaction and this action with the beam position, the pitch, the drilling sequence, the
aspect was studied by Choi and Li [53]. The feasibility of using C- size of the optics and the galvanometric controlled motors.
type microthin lm thermocouples (TFTCs) to measure the extre- Kanrnakis et al. [56] investigated the drilling of microholes in
mely steep temperature gradient around the laser spot has been polymer lm (125 mm thick Kapton polyamide) and a ceramic slab
investigated for the ns pulsed laser micromachining of metals. The (250 mm silicon nitride) using reshaped pulsed Gaussian laser
impact of laser uence on the depth and diameter of microma- beam having ns pulse duration. The laser beam was reshaped by
chined hole as shown in Fig. 29 has been obtained. It was observed spherically-aberrating Galilean telescopes to convert the Gaussian
that due to plasma absorption of laser energy, micromachined laser distribution into quasi-top hat distribution. Due to reshaping
depth increases rapidly when the surface temperature increases the thermal damage to the workpiece decreases dramatically and
slightly as illustrated in Fig. 30 and the peak surface temperature the overall quality of hole increases. It was observed that the
does not occur at the center of laser spot during micromachining. energy density required for micromachining using reshaped pulse
The advantages of using ns laser pulse with Gaussian beam prole is low therefore it can be used for high volume production.
 S. Mishra, V. Yadava / Optics and Lasers in Engineering 73 (2015) 89122 103

Qin et al. [6] proposed a new technology for the rapid fabrica- laser beam by scattering. Sapphire has better surface nish and
tion of 3D micochannel system inside quartz substrate by utilizing slow ablation rate due to its high melting temperature, high
both the thermal induced laser processing and plasma induced evaporation temperature and low thermal conductivity. Laser
processing. They demonstrated that 4 mm long channels of ablation of sapphire is a combination of photothermal and photo-
circular cross-section with diameters between 25 and 250 mm chemical process whereas silicon exhibits photothermal process.
can be fabricated by this method. This method can be adopted for The effect of laser uence on the ablation efciency of sapp-
the fabrication of 3D microuidic system like micropumps, micro- hire and silicon has been demonstrated in Fig. 32(a) and
mixers and capillary electrophoresis (CE) systems. It can be (b) respectively.
observed from Fig. 31 that the surface of channel produced by Pan et al. [58] used dual prism optical system as shown in
thermal induced laser processing is rough while the channel Fig. 33 with 355 nm UV Nd:YAG laser to fabricate arbitrary-shaped
surface produced by plasma induced processing is smooth. Otani microstructures on 4 in. wide silicon wafers with different thick-
et al. [57] have investigated the benets of using short pulse diode ness. The cutting line-width is controlled by changing the initial
pumped solid state (DPSS) Nd:YAG laser having wavelength of phase of the dual-prism optical system. Spiral microstructures of
355-nm and pulse duration of 15 ns for creating microfeatures in an aspect ratio up to 10 which can be used as resonators for signal-
very hard materials such as diamond, silicon and stainless steel. It transducing elements in MEMS devices were fabricated by the
was observed that micromachining of silicon wafers up to 1 mm authors (Fig. 34). Authors found that the crystal orientation of
thick without formation of any microcracks can be performed by silicon substrates does not hamper the efciency of laser micro-
this laser but even a small increase in pulse width increases the machining. Nikumb et al. [59] explored the feasibility of using
thermal damage. Steel is less sensitive to laser wavelength and short pulsed solid state lasers with pulse duration in ns to fs range
therefore microholes can be created using laser of wavelength for creating high-aspect ratio microholes and microfeatures in
1064 nm, 532 nm and 355 nm. To avoid any thermal induced different types of glasses. Q-switched Nd:YVO4 laser, freque-
microcrack in diamonds, third harmonic (355 nm) of a DPSS laser ncy tripled Nd:YAG laser and an ultra-fast Ti:sapphire laser at
is most effective due to its high absorption rate at this wavelength. 775 nm wavelength were used for the micromachining of glass. It
The ablation efciency of sapphire wafers (381 mm thick) and was found that the width of groove can be controlled by pro-
silicon wafers (533 mm thick) were investigated by Chen and per selection of laser power density and beam spot overlap. Com-
Darling [12]. The depth of machining for various focal planes and plex features without any crack and burr were obtained by using
laser scan speeds have been studied. The results show a rapid solvent based masking material in the form of thin lm. Laser
increase in ablation efciency when the laser uence is increased induced plasma machining technique, in which the charged par-
slight above the threshold uence but for high laser uence ticles emanating from the corona region of the plasma effectively
enhancement of ablation do not take place due to attenuation of remove the glass substrates to create channels with superne
surface nish, can be used to obtain precise microfeatures in glass
substrate.
The formation of trepanned through hole of 1 mm diameter in
140 mm thick borosilicate glass by fourth harmonic Q-switched Nd:
YAG laser was studied by Matsuoka [60]. It was found that with
the increase in number of lines per circular scans, the number of
circular scans required to form through hole by trepanning
decreases rapidly whereas the number of required laser pulses
increases rapidly. Wernicke et al. [61] explored the feasibility of
using UV laser of ns pulse duration for the micro-drilling of via
holes in Aluminum Gallium Nitride (AlGaN)/Gallium Nitride (GaN)
transistors on 400 mm thick single crystal silicon carbide substrate.
They found that instead of using lithography and dry etching
process for fabrication of semiconductor devices, UV laser micro-
machining can be a better alternative for the micromachining of
hard and chemically inert materials. Frequency tripled diode
pumped solid state laser of wavelength 355 nm, pulse repetition
rate 20 kHz and pulse length o30 ns was used by Kruger et al.
Fig. 28. The etch rates at saturation for different nozzles and processes gases, [62] for UV laser processing of single crystal SiC having 2.7 mm
compared to the ambient condition [51]. thick AlGaN/GaN epitaxial layers on the front. It was observed

Fig. 29. Relationship between laser energy uence and (a) depth and (b) diameter of laser micromachined holes [53].
104 S. Mishra, V. Yadava / Optics and Lasers in Engineering 73 (2015) 89122

that a remarkable change in Si/C ratio takes place at the surface workpiece. Single laser beam instead of usual two intersecting
and it approaches unity at a depth of several tens of nanometers laser beams was used for the micro-turning and the effects of
where the presence of oxygen and nitrogen was observed. No several process parameters like lamp current, pulse frequency and
microcrack formation takes place below the resolidied material laser scanning speed on the depth cut and surface roughness were
and the surface of resolidied material is electrically conductive explored.
due to the formation of nitrogen doped silicon-rich layer.
Three types of pulsed lasers: ns near-infrared (NIR), ns near-
5.2.3. Polymers
ultraviolet (NUV) and fs near infra-red (NIR) were used by Okuchi
Tiaw et al. [66] have investigated the use of third harmonics
et al. [63] for the Laser Beam MicroMachining of superhard nano-
DPSS Nd:YAG laser instead of excimer laser and fs laser for laser
polycrystalline diamond (NPD). It was observed by authors that ns
cutting, laser scanning and laser drilling of 812 mm thick bi-
laser with high average power produce rough and distributed
axially stretched polycaprolactone (PCL) lms, 12 mm thick PCL
surfaces whereas smooth and clean surfaces were produced by fs
lm fabricated by spin-casting method and 1 mm thick polymer
laser with low average power. 355 nm near UV laser is best suited
(used as optical encoder). A high magnication objective lens was
for the efcient machining of diamond because it is opaque for
used to obtain high laser uence at low output power. It was
NPD and it can be focused to smallest size by normal objective
observed that spin-cast lm does not show any tearing and
lens. Fig. 35 shows that the microgrooves fabricated in NPD was
melting whereas for biaxial drawn lm slight extent of melting
narrower and deeper than microgrooves cut into synthetic single-
occurs. Laser singulation was carried out with neat edge without
crystal diamonds (SCD). It was also observed that in spite of
too much heat affected zone even at high singulation speed. Shin
variation in the scanning speed the grooves cut into NPD are
et al. [50] illustrated that at low laser uence, no burr formation or
always deeper than other diamonds. The surface roughness of SCD
deviation around the ablated region takes place in polyamide lms
surface is two to three times larger than that of NPD surface. The
during micromachining with 355 nm DPSS Nd:YVO4 laser. At high
NUV laser produces thick ( 41 mm) graphitic layers on the surfaces
laser uence, bulging of the ablated holes along the periphery
but in fs laser this phenomenon is completely absent.
takes place due to photothermal reaction. Mullan et al. [67]
Mutlu et al. [64] investigated the effect of power, wavelength
investigated the relationship between focus spot size, pulse energy
and ambient pressure on the hole quality for drilling 800 mm thick
and ablated hole diameter produced with ns and fs laser on
alumina ceramic plate. Nd:YAG laser of second and third harmonic
polyethylene terephthalate (PET). Figs. 36 and 37 show the
with pulse duration of 6 ns was used for the drilling of alumina
variation of diameter with number of shots and total energy
ceramic. It was observed that the average crater depth increases
respectively. It was observed that to generate a small hole, multi-
non-linearly with average power and the phenomenon of plasma
ple pulses with low peak uence is preferable to single pulse
shielding is dominant for wavelength of 355 nm laser radiation
possessing same total energy.
and the increase of diameter is more than the depth increment for
this wavelength. It was found that crater diameter decreases with
increase of ambient pressure. Kibria et al. [65] investigated the 5.3. LBMM using ber laser
laser micro-turning of difcult to machine cylindrical ceramic
In ber lasers the gain medium is a ber doped with rare earth
ions such as erbium (Er3 ), neodymium (Nd3 ), ytterbium (Yb3 ),
thulium (Tm3 ) or praseodymium (Pr3 ). One or several laser
diodes are used for pumping. Fiber laser can be modulated to
operate at different pulse widths with high repetition rate. The
total energy deposited by a ber laser depends only on the pulse
duration and therefore if it is modulated to produce a longer pulse,
more energy will be produced. Development of Distributed Feed-
back (DFB) Laser having very narrow line width and double clad
high power laser has increased the commercial use of these lasers.
Fiber lasers offer high process stability and high energy efciency
due to its excellent beam quality and low thermal noise and low
non-linear effects [68].
Fig. 30. Effect of laser energy uence on surface temperature at 100 mm away from Kliene et al. [69] demonstrated the laser microcutting of
the center of the hole and depth of micromachined hole [53]. stainless steel stent implants using single mode ber laser. Kerf

Fig. 31. Cross sectional view of a channel drilled by (a) thermal-induced processing and (b) laser-induced plasma [6].
 S. Mishra, V. Yadava / Optics and Lasers in Engineering 73 (2015) 89122 105

Fig. 32. Laser ablation efciency vs. laser uences at different cutting speeds for (a) sapphire and (b) silicon [12].

Fig. 33. Laser beam refracted by prism: (a) initial phase and (b) prism rotates 1801
with relation to initial phase [58].

width and surface quality on the side wall was investigated and it
was observed that due to its good beam quality the ber laser
produces small kerf width. High pulse to pulse overlap produce
good cut quality but beyond 85% overlap no signicant improve-
ment in surface roughness take place. Kliene and Watkins [70]
have compared the results of microcutting using pulsed ber laser
and pulsed Nd:YAG lasers. It was observed that the cuts produced
by ber laser have similar features to those produced with
pumped Nd:YAG laser. At lower peak power, the surface quality
degrades from bottom to top edge of the cut. Low peak power will Fig. 34. High aspect ratio silicon microstructure obtained by laser microcutting [58].
produce low striations and hence it will improve the surface
roughness. Harp and Tu [71] investigated whether a ber laser
designed to be used in a continuous mode can be utilized to drilling time. Accumulation of heat deteriorates the quality of
perform pulsed ablation. It was observed that the MRR is lower for holes due to the formation of large amount of molten material.
short pulsed laser and it takes approximately 100 pulses to create Particle shielding and heat accumulation have negligible effect for
the same depth as 1 pulse from the CW laser. The experiment materials having high thermal conductivity and therefore high
shows that the pulse duration must not exceed 50 ms, otherwise aspect ratio hole can be obtained by utilizing the full power of
raised surface are created instead of microholes. As the pulse ber laser. In case of laser trepanning high quality holes can be
width increases from 20 ms to 40 ms the diameter of the microholes obtained at reduced average power compare to percussion drilling.
increases with the simultaneous decrease of depth. Even though, The feasibility of using a microchip laser amplied by diode
pulse width of 20 ms produce highest depth but highest aspect pumped ber amplier instead of fs laser for the micro-hole
ratio has been obtained for 18 ms. drilling of 250 mm thick carbon steel sheets has been studied by
Investigation has been done by Ancona et al. [72] to study the Ancona et al. [73]. Laser trepanning was also carried out by a
effect of repetition rate and the average power on the drilling galvanometric scanning system to obtain high level of precision in
breakthrough time. Materials having different thermal properties copper, stainless steel and high carbon steel. In case of percussion
(copper and stainless steel sheet of 0.5 mm thickness) were drilling, it was found that the ablation rate follow the same
selected to obtain melt free holes without any particle shielding. logarithmic dependence on the incoming pulse energy as the ns
Ultrafast ytterbium doped ber laser with average power of 100 W and fs laser and the breakthrough time is always below one second
and repetition rate of 1 MHz was used for experimentation. For even for the lowest pulse energy. In laser trepanning it was
metals having low thermal conductivity and heat diffusivity, the demonstrated that metal with high thermal conductivity produce
accumulation of heat play a critical role in determination of high quality hole with no spatter on surface whereas metals
106 S. Mishra, V. Yadava / Optics and Lasers in Engineering 73 (2015) 89122

Fig. 35. FE-SEM images of the groove processed at similar conditions on (a) NPD and (b) SCD [63].

having low thermal conductivity produce spatter on the surface.

The use of ber laser for the cutting of metallic cardiovascular
stent as shown in Fig. 38 was investigated by Meng et al. [74]. They
studied the effect of output power, pulse width, pulse frequency,
cutting speed and assist gas pressure on the kerf width. As shown
in Fig. 39 the kerf width increases with the increase of laser output
power, pulse width and pulse frequency.
The effects of pulse repetition rate (200 kHz to 25 MHz) and
pulse energy on fs ber laser on thin lm micromachining of gold
coated silicon wafer were investigated by Tan et al. [75]. It was
found that small craters with uniform line width was obtained at
high repetition rate and at lower pulse energy the pulse repetition
rate play a major role in the formation of HAZ. Investigation was
done by Bif et al. [76] for percussion microdrilling using pulsed
ber laser on 0.5 mm thick commercially pure titanium sheets.
The effect of pulse energy and pulse frequency was studied on hole Fig. 36. Variation of diameter with number of shots for three different pulse
quality and metallurgical features. The experimental results show energies [67].
that pulsed ber laser is suitable for microdrilling of high aspect
ratio micro-holes. Microstructural modications of titanium struc- effects of transient surface condition on the onset and rate of
ture were observed within a region of 20 mm on the entrance solidgas phase transition was explored by them.
surface. Both the top and bottom diameters increase with the An efcient procedure to enhance the ablation of ps laser was
increase of pulse frequency and pulse energy as described in presented by Zoppel et al. [80]. They demonstrate that by using
Fig. 40. As shown in Fig. 41 the inner wall of the hole produced two-color scheme, in which a small fraction of fundamental beam
by high pulse energy is more regular. is converted into second harmonic by passing it through a thin
Kawahito et al. [77] explored the absorption of a 10 kW ber BBO crystal, the ablation rate in silicon can be increased up to 70%
laser beam with a spot diameter of 200 mm in austenitic steel and for the same energy uence. Michalowski et al. [81] compared the
aluminum alloy during bead-on-plate welding as shown in Fig. 42. melt dynamics and mechanism of hole formation during percus-
The effect of change in speed (17300 mm/s) on the absorption sion and helical drilling of sandwich samples (consist of iron and
was investigated. It was observed that at the lowest speed the nickel layer) using laser pulse of ps duration. The study reveals
maximum absorptions of steel and aluminum were 89% and 93% that in percussion drilling burr formation take place, because the
respectively. At a 100 mm/s, the center part of an incident beam melt is more efciently ejected in the beginning. Fig. 43 indicates
with a bell-shape prole was delivered directly to the tip of a that during the initial period, the percussion drilled holes are
keyhole but at higher speed the incident beam is partially exposed narrow with signicant tip whereas the helical drilled hole is
out of the keyhole. wider with round tip. Large Rayleigh length and a small focus are
advantageous for the hole quality. Experimental investigation of
5.4. LBMM using ps lasers single pulse ablation of Au, Al and Ti alloy was performed by
Cheng et al. [82] with a laser pulse having pulse duration of 10 ps.
It was demonstrated by Konorov et al. [78] that hollow core Fig. 44 indicates that the metals with short electron phonon
photonic crystal bers with a core diameter of 14 mm can very coupling times (Al and Ti alloy) show a change of ablation
effectively transmit sequence of high power ps laser pulses and mechanism with strong phase explosion whereas Au do not show
the laser beam emerging from the ber can be used for micro- any such change owing to its high electron phonon coupling time.
machining by focusing it on the substrate (fused silica). It was Hu et al. [83] reported micro-hole drilling and micro-structure
observed that the laser beam of high spatial quality can be machining in metals, alloys and ceramics using ps laser. Holes of
obtained by avoiding the excitation of higher order modes through below 50 mm diameter in steel, Si3N4 and SiC/SiC were fabricated
proper selection of laser parameters. Gamaly et al. [79] analyzed with percussion drilling technique by using laser of wavelength
the ablation mechanism carried out with laser pulses of inter- 532 nm or 1064 nm. Trepan drilling technique was employed to
mediate pulse duration (12 ps) produced by mode locked Nd:YVO4 drill micro-holes in steel, Ti6AlV and SiC/SiC with laser of wave-
laser. They explored the ablation mechanism near and above the length 1064 nm. They found that complex micropatterns and
ablation threshold for aluminum, copper, steel and lead in air and microstructures as shown in Fig. 45 can be fabricated at very high
vacuum. It was observed that the ablation threshold get reduced speed with good precision by ps laser. The ability of ps laser for
when the machining is performed in air. The importance of the microfabrication of stent structures in nitinol (shape memory alloy
 S. Mishra, V. Yadava / Optics and Lasers in Engineering 73 (2015) 89122 107

used as self-expanding stent) and platinumiridium alloy (metal spatial resolution with negligible thermal diffusion into the
with high degree of biocompatibility and biofunctionality used for material. It induces low collateral damage and the non-linear
stent fabrication) has been explored by Muhammad et al. [84]. absorption enhances its versatility in terms of materials that can
They found that a dross free cut with HAZ of 15 mm was obtained be processed [85]. Due to its high peak power it is widely used for
in nitinol whereas platinum iridium alloy has negligible HAZ. Due various microfabrication application like ablative surface micro-
to the formation of recast layer and striations the surface rough- structuring, three dimensional bulk material modication etc. The
ness of nitinol is higher than platinumiridium alloy. high peak is not enough for material processing and pulse
amplication technique is required for practical microfabrication
application [2]. The new developments in the eld of ultrashort-
5.5. LBMM using fs lasers
pulse lasers and ampliers, such as ber oscillators, diode-pumped
ampliers, systems with periodically poled LiNbO3 crystals as
Fig. 46 shows the block diagram of fs laser modication
parametric ampliers for chirped pulses have enhance the relia-
mechanism. Non-linear multiphoton absorption even in materials
bility of fs lasers for micro-machining process [3].
that are transparent to the laser beam is one of the most important
In order to produce ultrashort pulse (o 1 ps) the laser gain
features of the fs laser. Due to its extreme short pulse width the fs
medium should have broad continuous emission spectrum
laser produce high density of electron which can induce high
because the Fourier-transform-limited pulse width is inversely
absorption even in transparent materials. Fs lasers have good
proportional to its spectrum. Ti:sapphire with an emission spec-
trum that can support pulse of 6fs is the most widely used laser
materials for generating ultrafast laser. Cr: LiSAF, Nd:glass, Yb:
glass, Yb:YAG and Cr:YAG can also be used as the laser gain media
to produce ultrafast lasers. Ultrashort laser pulses are generated in
a mode-locked oscillator. Most Ti:sapphire laser oscillators use
kerr-lens mode locking mechanism. Semiconductor saturable
absorber, also known as Antiresonant FabryPerot Saturable
Absorber (A-FPSA) is used for the mode-locking of Nd:glass.
Besides these, additive pulse mode locking, saturable Bragg
reector can also be used for mode locking. Prism pair or specially
made chirped mirrors are used in oscillator to oppose the pulse
spreading which take place due to dispersion of optical materials.
Ultrafast laser oscillator produce pulses with frequency of
100 MHz possessing energy in the range of nanojoules. LBMM
Fig. 37. Variation of diameter with total energy for different number of shots [67]. requires pulse energy in the range of microjoule to milli-joule.
Chirped-pulsed amplication (CPA) technology is used to amplify
the laser pulses because the direct amplication will damage the
optical components. Fig. 47 [86] demonstrates that in CPA the
pulse width is made longer by a factor of 100010,000 times by a
pulse stretched in order to reduce the peak power. This stretched
pulse is then amplied by the amplier and nally it is recom-
pressed to its short pulse state in compressor. The CPA ultrafast
laser also includes some additional components like faraday
isolator, pulse selector [9].

5.5.1. Metals
Liu et al. [9] elucidated the physics of ultrashort laser-matter
interaction to explain the phenomenon of material breakdown and
Fig. 38. A 316L stainless steel cardiovascular stent: (a) cut with ber laser and ablation. They have elaborated the advantages and application of
(b) cut with YAG laser [74]. precision manufacturing. Kruger and Kautek [11] investigated the

Fig. 39. (a) Kerf width vs. cutting speed for different output laser powers. (b) Kerf width vs. repeat frequency for different pulse widths [74].
108 S. Mishra, V. Yadava / Optics and Lasers in Engineering 73 (2015) 89122

Fig. 40. Views of holes drilled at different pulse frequencies and pulse energies [76]. (a) Entrance at F 20 kHz, E 0.5 mJ; (b) exit hole at F 20 kHz, E 0.5 mJ; (c) entrance
at F 50 kHz, E 1.2 mJ; (d) exit hole at F 50 kHz, E 1.2 mJ.

ablation behavior of wide variety of materials under the inuence

of fs laser. Zhu et al. [87] performed experimental analysis of
microdrilling operation in thin metal foils of aluminum, molybde-
num, titanium, copper, gold, silver and brass of 25 mm thicknesses.
They observed that materials possessing high latent energy of
evaporation require a large number of laser shots to produce a
through hole. For thin and low melting point metals ns lasers are
more efcient in terms of material removed per unit energy
whereas for hard materials fs laser are more appropriate to obtain
deeper holes. The effect of laser intensity on the ablation rate is
shown in Fig. 48. Banks et al. [88] investigated the effect of laser
uence, number of shots and polarization on the morphology of
hole during its evolution. It was observed that when the laser
uence is increased beyond its threshold value, further increase in
the depth does not occur. At high uence circular channels
are formed but periodic grooves are generated near threshold
value and s-polarized radiation always produces deeper and
rougher holes.
Analysis of threshold uence required to melt metal lms by
ultrashort pulses was done by Wellershoff et al. [89]. They found
that electronphonon coupling control the diffusion length of hot
electron in case of fs laser and different energy deposition takes Fig. 41. Cross sectional view of the hole drilled in titanium at (a) pulse frequency
place on noble and transition element due to the different value of 20 kHz, pulse energy 0.5 mJ and (b) frequency 50 kHz pulse energy 1.2 mJ [76].
electron phonon coupling constant. Nolte et al. [90] have explored
the effect of laser polarization on the quality for high-aspect ratio observed that submicrometer features size can be fabricated by
holes while drilling hole of 8 mm in 200 mm thick stainless steel varying the laser uence and number of laser pulses.
foil. It was observed that non-circular hole is created due to Venkatakrishnan et al. [92] studied the laser micromachining
polarization dependent reections at the wall of the hole. An on 1000 nm thick gold lm using femstosecond laser. They found
innovative polarization trepanning technique in which the direc- that during micromachining two ablation regimes exist. In the rst
tion of the linear polarization is rotated from shot to shot by regime no molten material is present and cutting is very shallow
means of rotating half-wave plate was demonstrated to improve whereas in second regime the pulse energy is higher than ablation
the quality of high aspect ratio holes. Dou et al. [91] analyzed the threshold and redeposition of molten material takes place. They
laser microstructures and laser induced surface modications suggested controlling the pulse energy in rst ablation regime to
produced by fs pulsed laser on 2024-T3 aluminum alloy. It was get clean and precise microstructure. Similarly Venkatakrishnan
 S. Mishra, V. Yadava / Optics and Lasers in Engineering 73 (2015) 89122 109

Fig. 42. Schematic diagram of cutting system based on ber laser [77].

Fig. 43. (a) Percussion drilled blind holes (the channel is narrow with pronounced tip). (b) Helically drilled blind holes (the channels are cylindrical and round tip) [81].

et al. [93] investigated the feasibility of sub-micron machining of

metallic lm with fs pulse. They found that sub-spot size feature
can be obtained by the precise control of the peak uence just
above the threshold uence. When the peak uence is 2% higher
than threshold value we can get a feature size of one-tenth the size
of laser spot. Authors fabricated holes of diameter less than
200 nm with focused laser spot of 1.7 mm in 100 mm thick metallic
thin lm. Dausinger [94] found that fs lasers have certain dis-
advantages like deformation of laser beam near the focus and
deection of s-polarized radiation at hole wall. No signicant
change in thermal behavior is observed when the pulse duration
is below 10 ps whereas the scattering effect increases when pulse
width is less than 5 ps, therefore pulse duration of 510 ps is more
suitable for micromachining of metals.
Rizvi [13] reviewed the applicability of fs laser for microma-
chining of different types of materials. It was found that the Fig. 44. Schematic illustration of melting regime and ablation regime for metallic
waveguide writing is the only unique application where no other materials with short electronphonon coupling time [82].
laser except fs can be applied. It was observed that ns laser pulses
could also produce similar results for certain materials. Fohl and titanium: 0.1021 J/cm2 and copper: 0.3529 J/cm2. It was observed
Dausinger [95] investigated the inuence of high repetition rate on that two distinct ablation regimes exist. In the rst regime the
drilling efciency and hole quality. It was found that ripple ablation rate is low and it is governed by the optical penetration
formation is more dominant in perpendicular polarization and depth of metals. In second regime, where ablation rate is high, the
circularly polarized laser beam reduce the effect of laser on the ablation rate is governed by the electron heat diffusion length of
hole exit. To obtain hole with special geometry and stringent metals. The increase of repetition rate does not deteriorate the
tolerance trepanning optics should be used. The increase of hole quality and ripples around the hole can be eliminated by
repetition rate enhances the drilling efciency and reduction in parallel polarization of beam.
pressure increase the drilling speed. Mannion et al. [96] carried Kamlage et al. [97] have demonstrated that the fs laser is
out detail study of ablation thresholds and ablation depth per suitable to fabricate microholes with special geometries, superior
pulse by using fs laser. The values of ablation thresholds obtained quality and high reproducibility. Fig. 49 illustrates that the holes
by them are stainless steel: 0.1600 J/cm2, niobium: 0.1460 J/cm2, drilled in vacuum do not change its shape with the increase of
110 S. Mishra, V. Yadava / Optics and Lasers in Engineering 73 (2015) 89122

Fig. 45. (a) Hole-array (diameter of each hole: 175 mm, depth: 75 mm) [83] and (b) pin-array (diameter of each pin: 250 mm, depth: 100 mm).

Multiphoton Absorption

Energy Avalanche Poto -ionizationh

absorption

Plasma Formation

Energy Thermal Shock wave

Dissipation diffusion
generation

Cooling Rate Stress Induced Pressure Induced

Refractive Induced Refractive Refractive Index Refractive Index
Index changes Index changes Changes Changes

Fig. 46. Femtosecond laser modication mechanism.

laser repetition rate whereas a systematic change in hole shape is

observed when drilling occurs in air. It was found that the hole
entrance diameter is less than the hole exit diameter at very high
repetition rate whereas in vacuum the hole entrance diameter is
always greater than hole exit diameter while drilling 1 mm thick
stainless steel plate. The surface roughness decreases drastically
with the increase of number of pulses. Liang et al. [98] pro-
pounded a new micromachining method by generating a circular
interference pattern as demonstrated in Fig. 50 by overlapping fs
laser pulses. Circular ring microstructures were fabricated with
this technique on copper substrate and by varying dimension of
the circular interferences fringes we can fabricate microlenses and
molds for micromachining.
Tong et al. [99] have explored the prospect of fabricating Fig. 47. Principle of chirped pulsed amplication [86].
embedded microheater patterns in thermal sprayed nichrome
alloy coatings on alumina substrates. Heater patterns have been
designed to produce a uniform heat ux, a linear distributed heat shown in Fig. 52. Groenendijk and Meijer [101] investigated the
ux and a non-uniform heat ux for uniform temperature dis- process of Laser Induced Periodic Structure (LIPPS) during fs
tribution. A novel technique to decrease the feature size consider- pulsed laser ablation with high repetition rate. They observed that
ably below the wavelength of the laser pulse has been propagated at the bottom of an ablated area transition of periodic ripple
by Ho et al. [100]. The ultrafast pulse laser interference technique structure into chaotic columnar structure take place depending on
has been developed in which only the central bright fringe of the the number of laser pulses per unit area. Kim and Na [102]
interfered beam obtained from Newton's ring interferometer as investigated the micro-ablation of 200 and 500 nm thick chro-
shown in Fig. 51. The schematic of experimental set up for sub- mium lms coated on a glass substrate. Their ndings show that
microdrilling of 1000 thick gold lm with laser interference is the use of multiple shots, change of polarization during machining
 S. Mishra, V. Yadava / Optics and Lasers in Engineering 73 (2015) 89122 111

and energy level slightly above the threshold value will increase effect of the multiple beam reection in the drilled hole. Genera-
the quality of micromachining. tion of nanoparticles aerosols and colloids from various types of
Effect of substrate temperatures on drilling of holes with fs solid targets in air and water medium with fs laser ablation was
laser pulses have been investigated by Zheng et al. [103]. The investigated by Barcikowski et al. [104]. It was reported that the
copper strips of 1 mm thickness at the temperature of 77 K (liquid ablation rate in gaseous medium is 10 times more than the
nitrogen temperature) and 298 K (atmospheric temperature) were ablation in water. The size and optical properties of nanoparticles
used for conducting the experiment. Fig. 53 illustrates that the are affected by the extent of overlap and laser uence.
hole generated at low temperature is small due to rapid dissipa- Formation of high aspect ratio hole drilled in 100 mm thick
tion of heat into the bulk material. Similarly, it was found that for copper sheet by varying the pulse energy and number of pulses
the same laser power and same number of laser pulses the depth has been investigated by Weck et al. [105]. They found that as the
of hole produced at low temperature is more due to channeling pulse energy increases the difference between the diameter of
hole at the entrance and exit decreases. The quantity of molten
materials is more when the pulse width is more than 10 ps
whereas for pulse duration of less than 10 ps large quantities of
vaporized material are formed. It was observed that when the
drilling is performed in vacuum, the size of molten droplets is
approximately constant for pulse length of less than 10 ps but
beyond this value it begins to increase. It was experimentally
veried by them that the machining efciency of 110 ps laser
pulse is same as fs laser. The morphology of pattern produced by
direct ablation of thin gold lm using 130 fs laser pulses at a
wavelength of 800 nm with repetition rate of 1 kHz were studied
by Dong-qing et al. [106]. The pulse energy were varied from

Fig. 48. Variation of averaged ablation rate for three different foil samples as a
function of laser intensity [87].

Fig. 50. Circular interference generation unit [98].

Fig. 51. (a) 2D prole of the conventional non-interfered Gaussian laser beam.
(b) 2D prole of the interfered Gaussian-like laser beam [100].

Fig. 49. Change of diameters at the entrance and exit holes fabricated in air and Fig. 52. Schematic of the experimental set for sub-micro-drilling with laser
vacuum [97]. interference [100].
112 S. Mishra, V. Yadava / Optics and Lasers in Engineering 73 (2015) 89122

Fig. 53. (a) Average hole diameters drilled by femtosecond laser pulses under two temperature conditions. (b) Average depth of the holes drilled by femtosecond laser pulses
under two temperature conditions [103].

200 nJ to 600 nJ. It was observed that the groove depth decreases micromachining of copper and stainless steel of thickness 50 mm
with the increase of scan speed but the groove width do not with different spatial proles (top hat and Gaussian). It was
changes very signicantly. At high pulse energy, the shape of observed that the processing time linearly reduce with the
groove matches the prole of laser and large variation in the depth increase of laser repetition rate.
along the cutting does not take place. For precise micromachining The formation of self-organized conical micro/nanostructures
with good reproducibility the ablation energy and feed rate should as shown in Fig. 56 in various metals such Ti, Al and stainless steel
be controlled adequately. have been reported by Nayak and Gupta [112]. They found that the
The effect of substrate temperature on ultrafast laser ablation of critical uence needed for the formation of microstructure
silicon (thickness 650 mm), stainless steel (thickness 100 mm) and depends on the optical and thermo-physical properties of the
glass (thickness 1 mm) was reported by Yahng et al. [107]. It was materials. The surface reectance of materials can be changed by
observed that the increase of surface temperature decreases the altering the number of laser pulses and the height of microstruc-
surface roughness for all three samples. With the increase of tures increases with the increase of laser uence and number of
temperature the ablation efciency increases by 20% for stainless laser shots as revealed in Fig. 57. Leitz et al. [113] presented a
steel and silicon whereas for glass there is no any appreciable comparative study for the ablation of metal with ms, ns, ps and fs
change. Wang et al. [108] proposed a two-step inclination ablation laser pulses. It was found that the effect of pulse duration on
process shown in Fig. 54 to fabricate microstructure with steeper ablation process of metals is most critical and even though the ms
draft angle. It was found that the laser focus position is the most laser system offers highest ablated volumes but due to low
important parameter which affects the morphology and ablation repetition rate the high heat conduction losses are high thereby
quality of microstructures. Chung et al. [10] investigated the decreasing the ablation rate. The ns laser offers highest ablation
ablation characteristic of 50 mm thick invar alloy used in the efciency per energy whereas the ablation rate of pico and fs laser
shadow mask of organic light-emitting diodes (OLED). It was is relatively low. The shielding effect signicantly affects the
observed that the ablated area increases with the increase of ablation phenomenon at high repetition rate. Wang et al. [114]
pulse energy but after reaching the value of 200 mJ the increase in analyzed the effect of lm properties on the material removal
ablation stops and therefore the pulse repetition rate must be characteristics during rear-side ablation of chromium lm with fs
increased to increase the ablation. Electron microscopy study for laser. It was observed that microstructure of small feature size is
percussion laser drilled powder metallurgy Ni-based superalloy obtained when the ablated lm has high coherence and adherence
has been presented by Garofano et al. [109]. They found that no strengths. The effect of lm properties on morphologies and size of
change in the microstructure of the base metal take place at the microstructure decreases with the increase of laser uence.
interface between the base metal and the resolidied layer but
distinct presence of sub-layers within the recast layer has been
observed. 5.5.2. Semiconductors and shape memory alloys
Laser ablation characteristics of nickel-based superalloy C263 Dong et al. [115] investigated the laser ablation of 1 mm thick
by fs laser (180 fs, 775 nm, 1 kHz) have been investigated by Silicon carbide (3CSiC) lm grown on silicon substrates. The
Semaltianos et al. [110]. The single pulse ablation threshold is threshold uence and ablation rate were experimentally deter-
0.26 70.03 J/cm2. The incubation factors which is used to describe mined and it was observed that at low laser uence the ablation is
the decrease in the ablation threshold when multiple pulse is defect-activation process taking place through incubation, defect
applied is 0.72. Fig. 55 depicts that the ablation threshold accumulation, formation of nanoparticle and vaporization of
decreases by 65% when 20 pulses were used to ablate the material. boundaries. In laser micromachining of silicon carbide the
For a uence of more than 5 J/cm2, the ablation is dominated by defect-activation process reduces the threshold uence required
the electron thermal diffusion length. In low uence regime the for ablation and enhances the lateral and vertical precision. The
optical penetration depth is 37.2 nm whereas for high uence use of helium as an assist gas increases the ablation rate of thin
regime the electron diffusion length is 387 nm. Bruneel et al. [111] SiC lms due to inertness and rst high ionization energy.
investigated the processing time and ablation rate during the Micromachining of grooves in indium phosphide (InP) by 150 fs
 S. Mishra, V. Yadava / Optics and Lasers in Engineering 73 (2015) 89122 113

Fig. 54. Sketch of two-step inclination ablation process for fabricating the microstructure with the vertical wall on roller [10].

Fig. 56. Laser treated surface showing the formation of micro/nanostructures after
exposing with 500 laser shots at a uence of 1.2 J/cm2 [112].

Fig. 55. (a) Ablation threshold vs. number of pulses (b) log(N*FN
th) vs. log(N) [110].

laser having wavelength of 800 nm has been investigated by

Borowiec et al. [116]. The groove depth was found to be inversely
proportional to the feed rate and directly proportional to number
of pulses. The depth of groove increases linearly up to 20
consecutive pulses after which the ablation rate decreases. The
best result in terms of groove geometry has been obtained with
polarization perpendicular to the cutting direction. Fig. 57. Microstructure height variation with number of laser shots [112].
Amer et al. [117] compared the induced stress and amorphiza-
tion created on single silicon crystal during micromachining with energy densities can be conveniently use to obtain craters of
ns laser and fs laser. Micro-Raman spectroscopy was used for the subdiffraction limit size on semi-conductor material like silicon
investigation and it was observed that the maximum stress occurs wafers. It was found that ablation efciency decreases when laser
at laser uence of 50 J cm  2 and 25 J cm  2 for ns and fs laser uence exceeds 10 J/cm2 due to absorption of the laser energy by
respectively. The ns laser creates higher stress than fs and surface induced air plasma.
circularly polarized fs produce less stress than the linearly polar- The investigation of deep hole drilling in a silicon substrate of
ized laser. Amorphization do not vary with the laser uence for fs 650 mm thickness with fs laser was done by Matsumura et al.
laser. Tran et al. [118] explored the effect of circularly polarized Ti: [120]. The ablation rate as a function of depth was critically
sapphire fs laser on silicon wafer. They found that depending on analyzed and it was found that the drilling rate decreases at a
the magnitude of laser uence two types of surface damage depth at which penetration coefcient changes drastically. The
morphologies are possible. At low number of pulses LIPPS forma- ablation rate depends on the logarithm of the incident uence at
tion does not take place but as the number of pulses increases self the surface. It was found that the hole produced by drilling from
organized structures begin to form at the center. Hwang et al. [119] the front surface in air is tapered whereas the holes fabricated
demonstrated that fs laser having sharp ablation threshold at low from rear surface in air are shallow. To produce well dened hole
114 S. Mishra, V. Yadava / Optics and Lasers in Engineering 73 (2015) 89122

with high aspect ratio, the drilling should be started from the rear whereas multiple pulses at high repetition rate acts as a point
surface which is in contact with distilled water. Due to capillary source of heat inside the bulk material. The size of the nal
effect the water owed into the drilled hole thereby producing structures depends on the number of laser shots. It was found that
high aspect ratio holes without taper by minimizing the effect of by utilizing the cumulative heating effect of multiple pulses we
redeposition and blocking. can write single mode optical waveguides inside the bulk glass.
The effect of laser uence and number of pulses on the Ngoi et al. [131] have proposed that the use of an acosuto-
morphological characteristics of micromachined surface has been optic-modulator (AOM) can compensate the spatial deformation
investigated by Zhi et al. [121]. They elucidated that due to generated by the acousto-optic deector (AOD). The AODs are used
incubation effect the ablation threshold varies with number of in laser direct writing systems of micromachining for high-speed
pulses and when pulse number is very large ripples formation will beam scanning with precision. The micromachining was per-
not take place. Dalili et al. [122] reported the effect of laser pulse formed on 3 mm thick quartz substrate coated with gold lm of
width on the spacing of ripples and diameter of grains created thickness 1000 with Ti:sapphire fs laser with 150 fs pulse
during laser irradiation of silicon. They concluded that ripple duration. Zoubir et al. [132] investigated the advantage of using
formation take place only at low uence due to boson condensa- the fs laser in deep hole drilling of soda-lime silicate glass and PbO
tion whereas grain formation occurs due to bond weakening and lead-silicate glass. It was observed that the fs laser is more energy
breaking at higher uence in the silicon substrate. The ripple efcient and the penetration depth is high for PbO lead silicate
spacing increases with increase of laser pulse duration. Yahng and glass. The viability of using fs laser for the micromachining of
Jeoung [123] reported the effect of substrate temperature on the composite materials was established by ablating 3 mm thick
surface roughness of silicon during fs laser ablation. They found graphite ber composite materials. The exibility and versatility
that when the laser uence is low the surface roughness increases of fs laser has been illustrated by fabricating gratings of 20 mm
with the increase of substrate temperature whereas at high laser period and waveguides over 1 cm in length and 10 mm in As2S3
uence the roughness decreases and then it acquires a thin lms.
saturation level. A new strategy for 3-D reversible laser micromachining of
The application of shape memory alloy (SMA) thin lms in polymer materials based on two photon photochromism was
optical devices has been explored by Tabib-Azar et al. [124]. They demonstrated by Konorov et al. [133]. Unamplied 60 fs pulses
investigated the effect of phase transformation and wavelength on with 0.5 nJ pulse energy of 790 nm Ti:sapphire laser was used to
the reection coefcient. Li et al. [125] proposed a novel method change the refractive index of PMMA doped with spiropyran
for the micromachining of thermal sensitive shape memory alloy molecules. It was observed that due to nonlinear optical nature
(NiTi) alloys with fs laser. The sideways-movement path planning of two photon photochromism, the changes in the refractive index
was adopted by them for the precise micromachining of NiTi. This are strictly conned to the waist of the focused laser beam and
technique not only increase the throughput due to high laser thus allowing direct writing of 3D arrays of waveguides. The
uence but also improve the feature precision by removing the structures written in photochromic samples can be erased or
recast layer on the edge of cut with laser induced air plasma. Uppal recongured due to reversibility of photochromic effect. Ran
and Shiakolas [126] have investigated the ablation mechanism et al. [134] demonstrated that high aspect ratio micro-hole with
during the micromachining of nitinol, a shape memory material. good quality can be obtained with fs laser in glass by fabricating
The experiments were performed to evaluate the incubation the holes from the rear surface which is in contact with the
coefcient, ablation threshold uence, gentle and strong ablation distilled water. They obtained a hole of diameter 6 mm and depth
phases along with the morphological changes on the materials greater than 300 mm in soda lime glass.
surface. The incubation coefcient of Nitinol is 0.95, therefore little Liquid-assisted micro-drilling in glass using fs laser was ana-
heat accumulation and plastic deformation would takes place for lyzed by Hwang et al. [135]. They explored the possibilities of
multi-pulse laser. The channel width and channel depth increases enhancing the hole quality by incorporating ultrasonic waves.
with the increase of laser uence. Zheng et al. [127] investigated Deep through holes is obtained when the drilling is started at
the effect of fs laser machining on surface characteristics and sub- rear surface in contact with a low viscosity liquid. Since glass is a
surface microstructure produced on nitinol alloy by changing the good conductor of ultrasonic waves therefore it can be effectively
laser power and the distance between the focusing lens and coupled with the liquid to isolate the trapped bubbles which is
workpiece. It was observed that fs laser produce an average responsible for occasional termination of drilling process. Fig. 58
surface roughness of 0.2 mm, re-deposited layer of 7 mm and depicts the drilling performance with and without ultrasonic
hardened layer of 70 mm. waves. 3-D bent holes and bent channels of tens of mm's in
diameter with an aspect ratio of 40 can be fabricated by this
method. Yashkir and Liu [136] identied the optimal process
5.5.3. Ceramics parameters to obtain high resolution surface laser etching and
Bonse et al. [128] demonstrated that fs lasers can conveniently via drilling in 175 mm thick glass substrate using Ti:sapphire laser
be used for microstructuring of extremely hard and brittle materi- with moderate pulse energy (o 5 mJ) and high repetition rate
als like TiN. They observed that as compared to the linearly (50 kHz). Ding et al. [137] reported the fabrication of optical
polarized laser radiation, the use of circularly polarized laser diffraction gratings in silicone-based and non-silicon based hydro-
radiation reduce the roughness and enhance the ablation rates gel polymers with fs laser having low pulse energy (1.3 nJ) and
for the same laser uence. Zhao et al. [129] performed microdril- high repetition rate (93 MHz).
ling on different materials (metal, semiconductor and isolator) Cheng et al. [138] demonstrated for the rst time the fabrica-
using fs laser. Authors reported that fs laser restrain the thermal tion of 3D microoptical cylindrical and hemispherical lenses with
diffusion inside the ablated materials. When the laser uence is radius of 1 mm, vertically embedded in a photosensitive Foturan
slightly above the threshold value a hole array with diameter less glass. The fabrication was performed by scanning the fs laser
than the wavelength of laser can be drilled. Micromachining of inside the glass to generate the curved surface and then annealing
transparent material by producing optical breakdown and struc- the sample for surface smoothening of the microlenses.
tural changes with fs laser having pulse energy 5 nJ has been The use of fs laser to fabricate biophotonic devices by 3D
demonstrated by Schafer et al. [130]. A single pulse produce integration of microoptical components such as microlenses,
structures of sub micrometer size inside the transparent material micromirrors and optical waveguides in single glass chip was
 S. Mishra, V. Yadava / Optics and Lasers in Engineering 73 (2015) 89122 115

Fig. 58. Comparison of drilling results. (a) without ultrasonic waves and (b) with ultrasonic waves [38].

reported by Wang et al. Direct writing technique was used to

fabricate microoptical lenses inside photosensitive glass by creat-
ing hollow microstructures [139]. Chen et al. [140] reported the
dependence of ablation threshold on the number of laser pulses
for the micromachining of lithium niobate, a widely used photonic
crystal. Fs laser at the pulse duration of 80 fs, with a 800-nm
wavelength, and a repetition rate of 1 kHz was used for the
micromachining. It was observed that that due to incubation
effect, the surface ablation threshold decreases with the increase
in number of laser pulses until it achieve a constant value and
value of ablation threshold for multi-pulse is much lower than the
ablation threshold for single pulse.
Li et al. [141] investigated the topography, radial spread and
chemical composition of slag produced during the percussion and
trepan micro-drilling process of alumina wafer using fs laser. It
was found that even though the average ablation rate does not
vary signicantly when ns laser pulses were used instead of fs
laser. But the fs laser pulse produces clean, crack free microhole in Fig. 59. Hole diameter and taper as a function of focus position [142].
alumina ceramics without any recast material. Wang et al. [142]
have analyzed the effects of various process parameters on quality
of holes drilled in 650 mm thick alumina ceramic by fs laser. It was wavelength of 800 nm and pulse duration of 150 fs was used for
observed that crack formation take place at low traverse speed due the drilling of 3 mm thick PMMA plate by Tan et al. [145]. It was
to heat accumulation but at higher traverse speed no crack found that the use of dual frequency beam produce high aspect
formation take place. When the focus position is varied from ratio hole with good prole and thus we can overcome the
positive to negative position, the hole diameter at the entrance limitation offered by the size and focal depth of laser spot in
gradually decreases to minimum value and then it begins to producing high aspect ratio microhole. The feasibility of using UV
increases as elucidated in Fig. 59. The provision of pause time to and Ti:sapphire fs laser to generate high resolution micropatterns
dissipate the heat can inhibit the crack formation. on biodegradable polymers like poly(-caprolactone) (PCL) and
Vukelic et al. [84] have explored the contribution of different poly(glycolic acid) (PGA) was investigated by Aguilar et al. [146]. It
mechanism in the formation of features at very high laser was reported that both UV and fs laser are suitable to generate
intensities. It was observed that for fused silica the pulse energy micron sized channels and holes in these polymers. The ablation
has dominant impact on feature size and the type of ablation depth increases with the increase in number of pulse and the
mechanism is governed by the feedrate. At high feedrate the width of channels can be increased with the laser pulse having
formation of feature is due to explosive plasma expansion whereas high pulse energy. The examination of PCL and PGA using scanning
at low feedrate the thermal mechanism dominates. Grasset and electron microscope (SEM), Fourier transform IR spectroscopy in
Bellouard [143] explored the possibility of combining the chemical attenuated total reectance mode (FTIR-ATR) and X-ray photo-
etching with fs laser for the efcient fabrication of 3D micro- electron spectroscopy (XPS) shows that the use UV and fs laser do
structures in fused silica. They demonstrated that fs laser can be not degrade the characteristics of polymers.
utilized for the fabrication high aspect ratio micro-molds as well as Kim et al. [147] reported the generation of certain microfea-
shallow pattern with nanoscale resolution in silica. tures with the aid of tightly focused fs laser in the wall of
microchannels produced in poly(dimethyl) siloxane (PDMS) poly-
mer by high-throughput fabrication technique such as soft litho-
5.5.4. Polymers graphy technique. They fabricated microcapillaries with a
Zhang et al. [144] demonstrated that holes with a diameter of diameter of 0.5 mm and aspect ratio of 800:1 in the wall of molded
2040 m and depth of 300400 m can be obtained in polymers PDMS channel. Sowa et al. [148] reported the fabrication of
when beam of 100 fs laser pulses at 800 nm wavelength were symmetric waveguides in PMMA by fs laser pulses. A waveguide
focused by a plano-convex lens. Arrays of micro-strings having of circular transverse prole was obtained by using slit beam
diameter 2 m and length more than 10 mm can be fabricated shaping method. Malinauskas et al. [149] systematically studied
by fs laser when projection patterning is carried out with a rec- the 3D microstructuring of photoresist polymers at very high
tangular pinhole. The advantage of using focus dual frequency uence. It was observed that avalanche absorption play a signi-
beam (based on the longitudinal chromatic aberrations) having cant role in generation of free electrons and the breaking of
116 S. Mishra, V. Yadava / Optics and Lasers in Engineering 73 (2015) 89122

chemical bonds. Their investigation helps to nd the most suitable and output response is the design of experiment (DOE). DOE is
wavelength for the 3D microstructuring of photo-polymer. widely used in engineering for the process optimization and
For the efcient ablation of porous material Hashida et al. [150] development, process management and validation test. It is a
investigated the interaction between the fs laser and the expanded designed experimental approach where a systematic way is used
polytetrauoroethylene (ePTFE) polymer having ne porous struc- to plan the experiment, collect the data and analyze the data. A
tures. The analysis of the energy spectroscopy of the ions emitted mathematical model showing the relationship between the input
from the interactions revealed that e PTFE was ablated by the parameters and the output response is developed by using
coulomb explosion of ions produced by fs laser rather than techniques such as ANOVA and regression analysis [154]. While
thermal ablation. Mendonca et al. [151] reported the microma- developing these models no assumption is taken and the devel-
chining of waveguides in PMMA doped with optically active oped model gives real solution valid for limited range of output
organic molecules known as azochromophores. The azochromo- conditions [155]. DOE shows the interaction between variables
phores have linear and non-linear optical properties due to which which help us to control those critical parameters which can give
it is used in electro-optic modulators, second harmonic generation us the best response. It provides the most optimal setting of
and birefringent devices. The threshold energy required for poly- parameters. The mathematical model generated can also be used
mer modication was determined and it was observed that the as prediction model. DOE is excellent in predicting the linear
micromachining of the doped PMMA take place due to two- behavior. The most commonly used DOE technique are response
photon absorption. surface modeling (RSM) with central composite design (CCD),
Taguchi's method and factorial design [155]. RSM is an anthology
6. Modeling and optimization of LBMM of statistical and mathematical methods that are helpful in
analyzing the relationship and effect of input machining para-
The LBMM processes are very intense, short lived and complex meters on the output response. For modeling and optimizing the
and since it is stochastic in nature therefore achieving the optimal manufacturing process using RSM, sufcient data should be
performance is very difcult. An effective way to solve this collected through experimentation. It offers a large amount of
problem is to discover the relationship between the performance information from a small number of experiments and we can
of the process and its controllable input parameters by modeling analyze the interaction effect of independent input process para-
the process through suitable mathematical techniques and opti- meters on the output response.
mization using suitable optimization algorithm [152]. Modeling Chen et al. [156] applied the Taguchi methodology to optimize
help us to understand the various complex phenomena that occur the process parameters for microengraving of iron oxide coated
simultaneously during LBMM and thus help us to evaluate the glass using Q-switched Nd:YAG laser. The input process para-
relative importance of various process parameters [153]. meters are beam expansion ratio, focal length, average laser
Mathematical description of physical phenomena taking place power, pulse repetition rate and engraving speed whereas the
during LBMM process is critical not only for its successful operation output response parameter was engraving line width. Chen and
but also for its optimization and precise control [27]. The rst step for Yao [157] proposed a hybrid approach to optimize the laser
process parameter optimization is to understand those physical microcutting process. The initial value of the selected parameters
phenomenon by developing an explicit mathematical model which was determined by the energy balance method along with the
may be mechanistic and empirical. The model in which the functional other information available regarding the interaction of laser beam
relationship between inputoutput and in-process parameters is with the materials. DoE was used to rene the obtained initial
determined analytically is called mechanistic model. The analytical values. Similarly, Kuar et al. [158] have performed optimal para-
models are mathematical model based on the basic laws and metric analysis based on response surface methodology (RSM) to
principles of machining process. These models are categorized into determine the effects of various process parameters such as pulse
three segments e.g., exact solution based model, numerical solution frequency, pulse width, lamp current and assist air pressure in
based model and stochastic solution based model. Exact solution microdrilling of zirconia (ZrO2) by pulsed Nd:YAG laser. The
based models do not provide the real solution because it is generally primary objective was to obtain the minimum HAZ thickness
based on certain hypothesis. In engineering science problem numer- and taper.
ical solution based models are most widely used where the solution of Dhupal et al. [159] developed RSM-based mathematical model
complex mathematical models are obtained by several numerical to optimize the process parameters setting so that minimum
methods such as Finite Element Method (FEM), Finite Difference deviation of both taper angle and depth of microgroove produced
Method (FDM), Boundary Element Method (BEM) etc. Since the on aluminum titanate substrate can be achieved. The input process
stochastic models are probabilistic in nature therefore it does not parameter were lamp current, pulse frequency, pulse width, assist
yield an appropriate solution for machining process. The modeling air pressure and cutting speed. Process parameter to obtain square
techniques of LBMM are mainly based on statistical regression, fuzzy microgrooves on cylindrical wokpiece of aluminum oxide by laser
set theory, and articial neural networks [152]. turning process has been determined by Dhupal et al. [160].
Due to complexity and uncertainty of the LBMM processes, soft Experiments were performed on the basis of central composite
computing techniques such as neural networks, fuzzy sets, genetic design (CCD) technique to study the effect of lamp current, pulse
algorithms, simulated annealing, particle swarm optimization (PSO) frequency, pulse width, cutting speed and assist gas pressure on
and articial bee colony (ABC) algorithm etc. are being preferred to the quality of microgrooves. Biswas et al. [161] applied RSM based
physics-based models for predicting and optimizing the performance CCD technique to optimize the Nd:YAG laser microdrilling of
of the LBMM processes. In the subsequent section a detail discussion gamma-titanium aluminide. The effect of lamp current, pulse
of various investigations performed for LBMM process by experimen- frequency, assist gas pressure and thickness of job on circularity
tal or empirical models, analytical models and Articial Intelligence of hole at exit and hole taper was investigated.
(AI) based models have been elucidated.
6.2. Analytical models
6.1. Experimental models
For the study of process performance of complex process like
The most commonly used experimental method which is used LBMM the analytical models are best tools for preliminary analy-
to statistically signify the relationship between input parameters sis. These models are based on the basic laws and principles of
 S. Mishra, V. Yadava / Optics and Lasers in Engineering 73 (2015) 89122 117

manufacturing process. In literature, a large number of analytical (QEOS) model which assumes that electron free energy, ion free
models have been developed for laser ablation by considering energy and the correction for chemical bonding effects are
different wavelengths, laser irradiance, pulse length, target mate- combined to give value close to Helmholtz free energy. The
rials, gas environments etc. [162]. electronic properties may be obtained from a modied Thomas
In order to control and optimize the laser induced material Fermi statistical model and the ionic properties are calculated by
removal during micromachining it is necessary to understand the Cowan model [83].
energy transport and phase change processes [163]. Understand- Xu et al. [164] developed one dimensional heat conduction
ing the transfer of heat-energy at the micro-scale is important for model to compute the heat transfer and phase change process
thermal processing using a pulse-laser. Since the solid lattice and during micromachining of nickel using excimer laser. Numerical
electron gas are not in thermal equilibrium therefore classical heat models based on enthalpy formulation are developed to track both
conduction models lose validity for the prediction of ultrafast the solid/liquid and liquid/vapor interfaces. They consider reec-
thermal behavior. Micro-scale heat transfer model, which can tion and absorption of laser beam at the materials surface, heat
describe the phenomena of energy interchange between electrons conduction in the material melting and evaporation, interaction
and phonons from a microscopic point of view, is needed. The between vapor/plasma plume and laser beam. The solid/liquid and
energy equations describing the continuous energy ow from hot liquid/vapor interfaces were assumed to be planar. The mesocopic
electrons to lattices can be expressed as a parabolic two-step model which not only considers the microstructural features but
model. Eqs. (8) and (9) describe the equations and boundary also provides the link between microscopic and macroscopic
conditions for the two-temperature model (TTM) used for the phenomenon occurring during the laser ablation process was
investigation of lasermatter interaction in ultrafast regime, where analyzed by Stoneham et al. [165]. The mesocopic methods enable
the two temperatures of lattice and electrons are function of space us to model the complex non-equilibrium behavior in laser
and time, and their development is governed by two coupled ablation. In this approach, the microstructural features like grain
differential equations: boundaries or dislocation are considered explicitly and this tech-
9 nique is benecial when the key process rate vary on a short
C e Tte k2 T e  GT e  T l S =
In Domain 8 length scale.
C l T
t GT e T l
l ; Paterson et al. [166] have presented a numerical model for the
ablation of microstructure by excimer laser, based on pulse-by-
where Ce is the volumetric electron heat capacity, Cl is the pulse propagation of the etched surface. The model assumes that a
volumetric lattice heat capacity, Te is the electron temperature, Tl denite ablation threshold exists for the materials and the
is the lattice temperature, k is the thermal conductivity, G is the material removal rate depends only on the laser energy ux
electronlattice coupling factor, S is the absorbed laser energy entering the surface. The side-wall prole of laser machined
density per unit time, and 2 is the Laplace operator. structure can also be quantitatively predicated by this model.
) Fan and Longtin [167] developed a time and position resolved
T e x; y; z; 0 T l x; y; z; 0 T 0 Initial Conditions
T e T moving breakdown model to accurately predict the nature of laser
n n 0
l
Neumann Boundary Condition
material interaction responsible for optical breakdown. The model
9 includes the pulse propagation in the focal volume. It was
where n is the unit outward normal vector on the boundary. It observed that the ns laser ablation is time dependent only
should be pointed out that insulated boundaries are imposed due whereas in case of fs laser the optical breakdown depends on
to the assumption that there are no heat losses from the surfaces both the time and position. Zhang et al. [168] have developed a
in the short time response. numerical model to simulate the micro-scale cavity formation of
But when the characteristic heating time is much shorter than copper under high intensity pulsed laser radiation. The model uses
the electron relaxation time of free electrons (the mean time for an enthalpy method to track the solid/liquid interface. It evaluates
electrons to change their states) in a metal, the parabolic two step the heat transfer and associated phase changes inside the target
model is not adequate to describe the continuous energy ow materials by considering the Stefan and kinetic boundary condi-
from hot electrons to lattices during non-equilibrium heating and tion at the liquidvapor interface and property of discontinuity
the hyperbolic nature of heat ux carried by electrons is more across the Knudsen layer.
appropriate for the accurate prediction. Neglecting the thermal Schafer and Urbassek [169] investigated the ps laser ablation of
dependence of thermal properties, energy conservation equations metals using a hybrid simulation scheme in which the molecular
and the heat ux equation for the hyperbolic microscopic two-step dynamics has been integrated with heat conduction equation to
model are written as obtain the electron temperature. The nite difference method was
9 used to incorporate the laser energy input into the electron system
C e Tte  qx  GT e T l S >
> and the fast electron diffusion taking place inside it. The atomic
=
C l T
t GT e T l
l
In Domain 10 motion near the surface of sample has been modeled using
>
>
k q 0
q T e ; molecular dynamics. Willis et al. [163] have developed numerical
F t x
model to nd the transient heat transfer and phase change during
Ce is the volumetric heat capacity of electron, Cl is the volumetric ps laser ablation of nickel. In the model reection of the laser
heat capacity of lattice, k is the thermal conductivity, q is the heat beam, volumetric absorption of the laser energy, melting and
ux, S is the radiation heat source, Te is the electron temperature, vaporization kinetics were considered to predict the depth of
Tl is the lattice temperature, t is the time, x is the space coordinate, melting and amount of mass lost at the free surface due the
and F is the relaxation time at Fermi surface. evaporation. Finite difference scheme with an implicit time
)9 integration technique has been used. Based on the results obtained
qx; 0 0 >
>
= Initial Conditions from drilling of high aspect ratio hole on different types of
T e x; 0 T l x; 0 T 0 11 polymers using KrF excimer laser, an analytical theoretical model
>
> Neumann Boundary Condition
T e T l
0 ; was developed by Tokarev et al. [170]. They assumed that absorp-
n n
tion of the incident beam takes place only on the side wall, no
The heat capacities of electrons and lattice is calculated at the plume heating of the side walls occurs and attenuation of incident
normal density of metal from the Quotidian Equation of State laser beam do not take place. The model predict that the aspect
118 S. Mishra, V. Yadava / Optics and Lasers in Engineering 73 (2015) 89122

ratio can be increased by using pulses of shorter wavelength, produces low tensile stress. An elaborate investigation about the
irradiation in vacuum, increasing the absorption coefcient, intro- role of energy transport method in the ablation mechanism of
ducing strongly absorbing dopant into the material and by using metal with ps laser in multi-burst mode has been reported by Hu
the irradiation in a chemically reactive atmosphere. et al. [182]. The non-linear increase in the ablation volume due to
A one-dimensional hydrodynamic model was developed by multi-burst laser ablation was calculated by using the two-
Itina et al. [171] for the numerical investigation of the ablation of temperature model (TTM) and it was observed that the tempera-
metal by fs laser pulses. The model considers the absorption of ture dependent electronphonon coupling play a critical role in
laser radiation, electronic heat conduction, electronphonon and predicting the accurate results. The result of simulation shows that
electronion energy exchange and material motion. It was for the same total uence the ablation volume per pulse increases
observed that ablation take place due to the propagation of in the multi-burst mode.
compressive shock waves into the bulk and expansion of material Gupta et al. [183] demonstrated that laser micromachining is
in the rarefaction wave. Jiang et al. [172] have modied the two an appropriate method to initiate aws formation to study the
temperature model so that it can be effectively used for the high fatigue and fracture behavior of materials. Dynamic response of
laser uences. In the modied model the heat capacity of the free the moving laser pulses was simulated through integrated energy
electrons was determined by using Fermi distribution, the relaxa- approach. Non-linear Finite Element Analysis (FEA) was adopted to
tion time and conductivity of the free electron was estimated by analyze the stress and strain behavior on titanium tube having
Boltzmann transport equation for dense plasma. The free electron 9.53 mm outer diameter and 0.81 mm wall thickness. It was
heating and interband transition have been taken into considera- observed that the amplitude of stress and strain at the notch root
tion by modied Drude model. The damage threshold uence of of laser prepared tube is higher than EDM-prepared tube and thus
200 nm gold lm was evaluated with the model. A 3D transient it is more precise technique to study the crack growth phenom-
nite element model was developed by Xiang et al. [173] to predict enon in materials. Vasantgadkar et al. [184] developed 2-D nite
the groove shape and temperature distribution on polymer micro- element model of laser matter interaction for ns pulse duration by
uidic chip. The evaporation surface was assumed to be non planar considering the dynamic absorptivity and absorption coefcient of
and it was approximated by bilinear polynomial surfaces. Bulga- the workpiece. The effect of plasma shielding and temperature
kova et al. [174] proposed a number of numerical models based on dependent material properties has also been included to enhance
TTM and the continuum drift diffusion approach to elucidate the the authenticity of the model. The model reveals that during ns
different phenomena taking place at different time and length pulsed laser ablation, the absorption coefcient of the target
scale in variety of materials. material decreases whereas the absorptivity increases with the
Tani et al. [175] developed a 3D FDM model to predict the increase of surface temperature. Huang et al. [185] integrate the
shape and volume of ablated work piece during laser milling. The two-temperature model with interface tracking method to explain
laser power intensity and distribution, pulse width and frequency, the ultrafast melting, vaporization and resolidication. The effect
the scanning velocity of galvanometer mirrors and laser paths of pulse frequency, separation time between the pulses and
along with the physical state of plasma plume were taken into number of pulses on the phase change process were investigated.
account. The model can predict the shape of crater for both single
pulse as well as multi-pulse. The variation in ablation rate at high
laser uence in several metallic materials having wide variation in 6.3. Articial Intelligence (AI) models
the values of electron coupling constant has been explained by
Cheng et al. [176]. Simulation was done using a predictive model AI exploits the tolerance for uncertainty and imprecision to
based on critical-point phase separation (CPPS) theory. Analysis achieve greater tractability and robustness with lower cost of
was done for single shot ablation mechanism and it was observed solution. Since LBMM is a complex, dynamic and non-linear
that CPSS is the dominant ablation mechanism for 10 ps laser machining process with imprecise and incomplete information
duration. Ho et al. [177] developed a 3-D model for the evaluating therefore the use of AI methods will help to nd the reasonable
etch depth per pulse, temperature distribution and fusion shape of useful solution through the development of expert system, Fuzzy
alumina ceramics during ns laser drilling. It was assumed that the logic (FL) systems, articial neural network (ANN) system and
surface heat ux dissipated to the ambient air is negligible Genetic Algorithm (GA) system. Expert system is an AI program
compared to heat ux of the incident laser and the maximum that has expert level knowledge about a particular domain and
surface temperature on the workpiece is 2000 K. Lee and Asibu knows how to use its knowledge to respond properly. An expert
[178] simulated the TTM model in a general purpose FEM package, system has three parts: knowledge base, inference engine and user
ABAQUS, so that the model can be utilized in practical engineering interface.
problems. The simulation indicates that a maximum molten pool FL helps to carry out computations with vaguely dened para-
depth is obtained near the ablation threshold. meter. Fuzzy set theory-based modeling is generally preferred when
Rejab et al. [179] developed four different nite element subjective knowledge or opinion of process experts plays a key role
models for the virtual laser micromachining of MEMS components in dening objective functions and decision variables. A distribution
like micro-bridge, micro-cantilever, micro-mirror and micro- (membership function) over the feasible interval of parameter is
comb. Transient thermal analysis was done to determine the required to capture the knowledge of the expert. The closer the
time-resolved temperature distribution. Similarly, Shalahim et al. value of this membership function of a variable to 1, the more that
[180] simulated the laser micromachining of acrylic material using variable belongs to the fuzzy set. The fuzzy set-based techniques can
FEM. It was observed that the good tradeoff between the laser be quite effective in converting subjective knowledge/opinion of the
power and moving velocity is essential to produce defect free skilled operator into a mathematical framework [186].
edge. A nite element model using ABAQUS has been used by Articial neural network (ANN) is a powerful data modeling
Nisar et al. [181] to investigate the effect of different beam tool that is able to capture and represent complex inputoutput
geometries on the thermal stresses generated in soda lime glass relationships. Neural networks are composed of simple elements
sheets by diode laser. Effort has been done to minimize the cut operating in parallel. Neural networks systems can acquire, store,
deviation at the leading and trailing edge of the glass sheet. It was and utilize knowledge gained from experience. ANN is capable of
observed that triangular-forward beam at the leading edge and learning from an experimental data set to describe the nonlinear
triangular-reverse and circular beam geometry at the trailing edge and interaction effects with great success. Neural network can be
 S. Mishra, V. Yadava / Optics and Lasers in Engineering 73 (2015) 89122 119

trained to perform a particular function by adjusting the values of 7. Conclusions

connections (weights) between elements. Commonly, neural net-
works are adjusted or trained so that a particular input leads to a 1. The fundamental understanding of the ultrafast ablation pro-
specic target output. The most commonly used neural network cess along with the physical mechanisms and the main experi-
model is the multilayer perceptron (MLP). The back-propagation is mental parameters involved in LBMM process has been
a popular learning method of the MLP network. The true power elucidated. Optical breakdown mechanisms, including electron
and advantage of using neural networks lies in their ability to avalanche ionization and multiphoton absorption have been
represent both linear and non-linear relationships and in their briey discussed.
ability to learn these relationships directly from the data being 2. With ultrashort laser pulses the ablated spot size may be
modeled [152]. smaller than the laser focus spot size. Plasma interaction and
The GA is used to nd the maxima and minima of a function in polarization play an important role in determining the quality
a heuristic manner. The obtained global maxima and minima are of laser micromachined components.
considered to be close to exact ones. The objective and constraint 3. CPA technique is used to produce ultrafast fs lasers. In this
functions are not required to be continuous and it may be technique pulsewidth manipulation is employed and these
expressed in the form of language. This makes it suitable to be systems are complex and have size, stability and reliability
used with FL theory. GA exploits the idea of the survival of the problems. Pulse length of few ps (110 ps) is as efcient as fs
ttest and the interbreeding population to create a novel and laser and it produce same surface morphologies.
innovative search strategy. A population of the strings represent- 4. High degree of process control can be achieved in LBMM by
ing solution to the specied problem is maintained by GA, which optimizing the energy coupling and controlling the laser
then iteratively creates the new population from the old by induced effects in materials. Using temporal pulse forming
ranking the strings and interbreeding the ttest to create the we can control the chemical composition and kinetic properties
new strings, which are closer to the optimum solution to a of the ablated particles.
specied problem. Genetic algorithms (GAs) are very appealing 5. The cross sectional shape of optical waveguides and micro-
for single and multi-objective optimization problems and it is used channels can be manipulated by beam shaping techniques and
when near optimal improved conditions are acceptable. It may be in future the LBMM can be effectively used for microfabrication
applied to continuous or discrete response function. where other methods like etching, soft lithography cannot be
Yousef et al. [187] predicted the level of pulse energy required used due to specialty of material or required precision in
to produce a crater of desired depth and diameter by multi-layered combination with non- at geometry.
neural network model. The input process parameters were mean 6. Fs laser can overcome the diffraction limit when the peak
depth and mean diameter whereas the output response were uence is slightly above the ablation threshold and a resolution
pulse energy, variance of depth and variance of diameter. The of 10 nm can be achieved. More detail investigation is required
study reveals that neural network approach is able to predict the to study the effect of incubation and ripples formation.
nature of material removal process during non-linear microma- 7. High quality microfabrication of optically transparent material
chining process with high degree of accuracy. Dhara et al. [188] is possible by laser hybrid (multiwavelength excitation) and
investigated the laser micromachining of tungstenmolybdenum media assisted (LIPAA and LIBWE) processes.
high speed steel. A feed-forward back propagation neural network 8. The electronphonon coupling is an important parameter for
(BPNN) model trained by Levenberg Marquadt (LM) algorithm was LBMM using ultrashort laser pulses because it governs the
proposed to predict the optimum input machining parameters so diffusion length of hot electrons. The hyperbolic microscopic
that groove with maximum depth and minimum recast layer can two-step model is capable of modeling heat-energy transfer at
be obtained. Karazi and Brabazon [189] developed three feed micro-scale.
forward back propagation articial neural network model and 9. Computational models and simulations using FEM of LBMM is
one DOE model to predict the width and depth of microchannels lacking. It can be helpful to predict the optimum process
produced in glass with CO2 laser. The investigation was carried out parameters that will enhance the quality of micromachined
to evaluate the impact of power, pulse frequency and traverse components. ANN can help to develop better prediction model
speed of laser machine on the output response. The effect of from which we can obtain more reliable information to control
varying the number and selection of training data were investi- the LBMM process.
gated. The ANN models were developed in LabVIEW coding. It was
observed that the ANN model with highest number of training
data gives lowest maximum percentage error while the ANN References
model with all the corner points of experimental data produce
lowest average percentage error followed by DOE model. [1] Rykalin N, Uglow A, Kokora A. Laser machining and welding. Moscow: Mir
Ciurana et al. [190] focused on modeling and optimizing process Publishers; 1978.
[2] Sugioka K, Meunier M, Piqu A. Laser precision microfabrication. Berlin
parameters in pulsed laser micromachining. Experiments were Heidelberg: Springer Verlag Limited; 2010.
carried in AISI H13 hardened tool steel to crate T-shaped deep [3] Meijer J. Laser beam machining (LBM) state of the art and new opportunities.
features with straight and tapered walls. ANN was used to model J Mater Process Technol 2004;149:217.
[4] Tao YL, Chen H, Zhang W. Time scale effects in laser material removal: a
the relation between input process parameters and quality char- review. Int J Adv Manuf Technol 2005;26:598608.
acteristics. Predictions with ANNs were compared with experimen- [5] Hua C, Longtin JP. Modeling optical breakdown in dielectrics during ultrafast
tal work. For multiobjective optimization of the process for laser processing. Appl Opt 2001;40(18):312431.
[6] Ashkenasi D, Muller G, Rosenfeld A, Stoian R, Hertel IV, Bulgakova NM, et al.
minimum surface roughness and minimum volume error, Particle
Fundamentals and advantages of ultrafast micro-structuring of transparent
Swarm Optimization (PSO) technique was used and it was observed materials. Appl Phys A 2003;77:2238.
that the proposed model and optimization technique can predict [7] Qin SJ, Li WJ. Process characterization of fabricating 3D micro channel
the optimum parameters accurately. Similarly, Biswas et al. [191] systems by laser-micromachining. Sens Actuator A 2002;9798:74957.
[8] Desbiens JP, Masson P. ArF excimer laser micromachining of Pyrex, Sic and
have also developed neural network model to optimize the geo- PZT for rapid prototyping of MEMS components. Sens Actuator A
metric features of micro-drilled hole in TiNAl2O3. 2007;136:55463.
120 S. Mishra, V. Yadava / Optics and Lasers in Engineering 73 (2015) 89122

[9] Liu X, Du D, Mourou G. Laser ablation and micromachining with ultrashort [43] El-Bandrawy M, Nagarathnam K, Gupta MC, Hamann C, Horsting J. Copper
laser pulses. IEEE J Quantum Electron 1997;33:170616. vapour laser micromachining of 304 stainless steel. J Laser Appl 2003;15
[10] Chung IY, Kim JD, Kang KH. Ablation drilling of invar alloy using ultra-short (2):1016.
pulsed laser. Int J Precis Eng Manuf 2009;10(2):116. [44] Bordatchev EV, Nikumb SK. An experimental study and statistical analysis of
[11] Kruger J, Kautek W. The femtosecond pulse laser: a new tool for micro- the effect of laser pulse energy on the geometric quality during laser
machining. Laser Phys 1999;9:3040. precision machining. Mach Sci Technol 2003;7(1):83104.
[12] Chen TC, Darling RB. Parametric studies of pulsed near ultraviolet frequency [45] Jackson MJ, Neill WO. Laser micro drilling of tool steel using Nd:YAG lasers. J
tripled Nd:YAG laser micromachining of sapphire and silicon. J Mater Process Mater Process Technol 2003;142:51725.
Technol 2005;169:2148. [46] Tunna L, Neill WO, Khan A, Sutcliffe C. Analysis of Laser micro drilled holes
[13] Rizvi NH. Femtosecond laser micromachining: current status and applica- through aluminium for micro-manufacturing applications. Opt Lasers Eng
tions. RIKEN Rev 2003;50:7782. 2005;43:93750.
[14] Gower MC. Industrial application of laser micromachining. Opt Express [47] Forsman AC, Banks PS, Perry MD, Campbell EM, Dodell AL, Armas MS. Double
2000;7(2):5667. pulse machining as a technique for the enhancement of material removal
[15] Harvey EC, Rumsby PT, Gower MC, Remnant JL. Microstructuring by excimer rates in laser machining of metals. J Appl Phys 2005;98:15.
laser. Proc of SPIE Micromach Microfabr Process Technol 1995;2639:266 [48] Stafe M, Negutu C, Popescu IM. Real-time determination and control of the
http://dx.doi.org/10.1117/12.221283. laser drilled holes depth. Shock Waves 2005;14:1236.
[16] Pantelis D, Psyllaki P. Excimer laser micromachining of CMSX2 and TA6V [49] Matsuoka Y, Kizuka Y, Inoue T. The characteristics of laser micro drilling
alloys. Mater Manuf Process 1996;11:27382. using a Bessel beam. Appl Phys A 2006;84:42330.
[17] Tonshoff HK, Overmeyer L, Ostendorf A, Hesener H. New machining concept [50] Shin BS, Oh JY, Sohn H. Theoretical and experimental investigations into
for manufacturing microstructures with excimer lasers. Mach Sci Technol laser ablation of polyamide and copper lms with 355-nm Nd:YVO4 laser. J
1997;1(1):15362. Mater Process 2007;187188:2603.
[18] Ricciardi G, Cantello M, Mariotti F, Castelli P, Giacosa P. Micromachining with [51] Khan AH, Celotto S, Tunna L, Neill WO, Sutcliffe CJ. Inuence of micro-
excimer laser. CIRP AnnManuf Technol 1998;47:1458. supersonic gas jets on nanosecond laser percussion drilling. Opt Lasers Eng
[19] Lazare S, Lopez J, Weisbuch F. High-aspect-ratio microdrilling in polymeric 2007;45:70918.
materials with intense KrF laser radiation. Appl Phys A 1999;69:S16. [52] Dietrich J, Brajdic M, Walther K, Horn I, Kelbassa I, Poprawe R. Investigation
[20] Hanemann T, Peging W, Haubelt J, Gahr KHZ. Laser micromachining and of increased drilling speed by online high speed photography. Opt Lasers Eng
light induced reaction injection molding as suitable process sequence for the 2008;46:70510.
rapid fabrication of microcomponents. Microsyst Technol 2002;7:20914. [53] Choi H, Li X. Experimental investigations of laser micromachining of nickel
[21] Peging W, Bernauer W, Hanemann T, Torge T. Rapid fabrication of using thin lm thermocouples. J Manuf Sci Eng 2008;130:210028.
microcomponentsUV-laser assisted prototyping, laser micro-machining of [54] Fasasi AY, Mwenifumbo S, Rahbar N, Chen J, Li M, Beye AC, et al. Nano-
mold inserts and replication via photomolding. Microsyst Technol second UV laser processed micro-grooves on Ti6Al4V for biomedical appli-
2002;9:6774. cations. Mater Sci Eng C 2009513.
[22] Ghantasala MK, Hayes JP, Harvey EC, Sood DK. Patterning, electroplating and [55] DAmbra DM, Needes MCA, Needes CRS, Wang CB. Via formation in green
removal of SU-8 moulds by excimer laser micromachining. J Micromech ceramic dielectric using a YAG laser. In: Proceedings of 42nd IEEE conference
Microeng 2001;11:1339. on electronic components and technology, San Diego, USA; 1992. p. 107280.
[23] Kancharla VV, Chen S. Fabrication of biodegradable polymeric micro-devices [56] Karnakis DM, Fieret J, Raumsby PT, Gower MC. Microhole drilling using
using laser micromachining. Biomed Microdevices 2002;4(2):1059. reshaped pulsed Gaussian laser beams. Proc SPIE 2001;4443:1508.
[24] Xu X, Willis DA. Non-equilibrium phase change in metal induced by [57] Otani T, Herbst L, Heglin M, Govorkov SV, Wiessner AO. Microdrilling and
nanosecond pulsed laser irradiation. J Heat Transf 2002;124:2938. micromachining with diode-pumped solid state lasers. Appl Phys A
[25] Kim J, Xu X. Excimer laser fabrication of polymer microuidic devices. J Laser 2004;79:13359.
Appl 2003;5:25560. [58] Pan CT, Hwang YM, Hsieh CW. Dynamic characterization of silicon-based
[26] Lazare S, Tokarev V. Recent experimental and theoretical advances in microstructures of high aspect ratio by dual-prism UV laser system. Sens
microdrilling of polymers with laser beams. Proc SPIE 200422131. Actuator A 2005;122:4554.
[27] Hopp B, Smausz T, Bereznai M. Processing of transparent materials using [59] Nikumb S, Chen Q, Li C, Reshef H, Zheng HY, Qiu H, et al. Precision glass
visible nanosecond laser pulses. Appl Phys A 2007;87:779. machining, drilling and prole cutting by short pulse lasers. Thin Solid Films
[28] Chryssolouris G. Laser machiningtheory and practice (mechanical engi- 2005;477:21621.
neering series). New York: Springer-Verlag; 1991. [60] Matsuoka Y. Trepanning of glass using the fourth harmonic of nanosecond
[29] Presby HM, Benner AF, Edward CA. Laser micromachining of efcient ber pulse Nd:YAG laser. Appl Phys A 2007;88:31922.
microlenses. Appl Opt 1990;29(18):26925. [61] Wernicke T, Kruger O, Herms M, Wer J, Kirmse H, Neumann W, et al.
[30] Cheng JY, Wei CW, Hsu KH, Yound TH. Direct-write laser micromachining Analysis of materials modications caused by UV laser micro drilling of via
and universal surface modication of PMMA for device development. Sens holes in AlGaN/GaN transistors on SiC. Appl Surf Sci 2007;253:800814.
Actuator B 2004;99:18696. [62] Kruger O, Wernicke T, Wur J, Hergenroder R, Trankle G. Analysis of material
[31] Snakenborg D, Klank H, Kutter JP. Microstructure fabrication with CO2 laser modications caused by nanosecond pulsed UV laser processing of SiC and
system. J Micromech Microeng 2004;14:1829. GaN. Appl Phys A 2008;93:8591.
[32] Shi G, Huang Q, Li WJ, Huang W, Shi G, Li K. Towards automated [63] Okuchi T, Ohfuji H, Odake S, Kagi H, Nagatomo S, Sugata M, et al.
micromachining of PMMA micro channels using CO2 laser and sacricial Micromachining and surface processing of the super-hard nano-polycrystal-
mask process. In: Proceedings of the IEEE international conference on line diamond by three types of pulsed lasers. Appl Phys A 2009;96:83342.
robotics and automation; 2004. p. 5762. [64] Mutlu M, Kacar E, Akman E, Akkan CK, Demir P, Demir A. Effects of the laser
[33] Tan B, Venkatakrishnan K. Dual focus laser micro-engineering. J Mod Opt wavelength on drilling process of ceramic using Nd:YAG laser. J Laser Micro/
2005;52(17):260311. Nanoeng 2009;4(2):848.
[34] Chung CK, Wu MY, Wu JC, Sung YC, Huang GR. Silicon micromachining by [65] Kibria G, Doloi B, Bhattacharyya B. Experimental analysis on Nd: YAG laser
CO2 laser. In: Proceedings of the 1st IEEE international conference on nano/ micro turning of alumina ceramic. Int J Adv Manuf Technol 2010;50:64350.
micro engineered and molecular systems ; 2006. p. 14458. [66] Tiaw KS, Hong MH, Teoh SH. Precision laser micro-processing of polymers. J
[35] Guoquan S, Tongyu W. Study on the effects of processing parameters laser Alloy Compd 2008;449(12):22831.
microdrilling. In: Proceedings of the IEEE international conference on [67] Mullan C, Connor GM, Favre S, llie D, Glynn TJ. Estimating spot size and
mechatronics and automation; 2008. p. 43841. relating hole diameters with uence and number of shots for nanosecond
[36] Takeno S, Moriyasu M, Kuzumoto M, Kurosawa M, Hirata G. Laser drilling of and femtosecond laser ablation of polyethylene terephthalate. J Laser Appl
epoxy-glass printed circuit boards. J Laser Micro/Nanoeng 2009;4(2):11823. 2007;19(3):15864.
[37] Singh B, Subramaniam VV, Daulatabad SR, Chakraboty A. Enhance perfor- [68] Canning J. Fibre lasers and related technologies. Opt Lasers Eng
mance of a wide aperture copper vapour laser with hydrogen additive in 2006;44:64776.
neon buffer gas. Pramana J Phys 2010;75(5):9615. [69] Kleine KF, Whitney B, Watkins KG. Use of bre lasers for micro cutting
[38] Knowles MRH. Microablation with power pulsed copper vapour lasers. Opt applications in the medical device industry. In: Proceedings of 21st ICALEO,
Express 2000;7(2):505. Scottsdale; 2002.
[39] Glover ACJ, Illy EK, Piper AJ. High-speed ultraviolet micro-machining of [70] Kleine KF, Watkins KG. Fiber laser for micro cutting of metals. Photonics
polymers with frequency- doubled copper vapour lasers. IEEE J Sel Top West; 2003.
Quantum 1995;1(3):8306. [71] Harp WR, Dilwith JR, Tu JF. Laser ablation using a long pulsed, high uence,
[40] Illy EK, Brown DJW, Withford MJ, Piper JA. Enhanced polymer ablation rates CW single mode ber laser. J Mater Process Technol 2008;198:2230.
using high-repetition-rate ultraviolet lasers. IEEE J Sel Top Quantum 1999;5 [72] Ancona A, Roser F, Rademaker K, Limpert J, Nolte S, Tunnermann A. High
(6):15438. speed laser drilling of metals using a high repetition rate, high average
[41] Farlow R, Galbraith W, Knowles M, Hayward G. Micromachining of piezo- power ultrafast laser CPA system. Opt Exp 2008;16(12):895868.
composite transducer using a copper vapour laser. IEEE Trans Ultrason [73] Ancona A, Nodop D, Limpert J, Nolte S, Tunnermann A. Microdrilling of
Ferroelectr 2001;48(3):63940. metals with an inexpensive and compact ultra-short-pulse ber amplied
[42] Coutts DW. Double pass copper vapour laser master oscillator power microchip laser. Appl Phys A 2009;94:1924.
amplier systems: generation of at-top focused beam for ber coupling [74] Meng H, Liao J, Zhou Y, Zhang Q. Laser micro-processing of cardiovascular
and percussion drilling. IEEE J Quantum Electron 2002;38(9):121724. stent with ber laser cutting system. Opt Laser Technol 2009;41:3002.
 S. Mishra, V. Yadava / Optics and Lasers in Engineering 73 (2015) 89122 121

[75] Tan B, Dalili B, Venkatakrishnan K. High repetition rate femtosecond laser [108] Wang W, Mei X, Jiang G. Control of microstructure shape and morphology in
nano-machining of thin lms. Appl Phys 2009;95:53745. femtosecond laser ablation of imprint rollers. Int J Adv Manuf Technol
[76] Bif CA, Lecis N, Previtali B, Vedani M, Vimercati GM. Fiber laser microdril- 2009;41:50412.
ling of titanium and its effect on material microstructure. Int J Adv Manuf [109] Garofano JKM, Marcus HL, Aindow M. Characterization of microstructural
Technol 2010;54(14):14960. effects in a percussion laser drilled powder metallurgy Ni-based superalloy. J
[77] Kawahito Y, Matsumoto N, Abe Y, Katayama S. Relationship of laser Mater Sci 2009;44:6804.
absorption to keyhole behavior in high power ber laser welding of stainless [110] Semaltianos NG, Perrie W, French P, Shapr M, Dearden G, Logothetidis S, et al.
steel and aluminium alloy. J Mater Process Technol 2011;221(10):15638. Femtosecond laser ablation characteristic of nickel based superalloy C263.
[78] Konorov SO, Fedotov AB, Kolevatova OAA, Belgoglazov VI, Skibina NB, Appl Phys A 2009;94:9991009.
Shcherbakov AV, et al. Laser breakdown with millijoule trains of a [111] Bruneel D, Matras G, Hazric RL, Huot N, Konig K, Audouard E. Micromachining
picosecond pulses transmitted through a hollow-core photonic-crystal bre. of metals with ultra short Tisapphire lasers: prediction and optimization of
J Phys D 2003;36:17. the processing time. Opt Lasers Eng 2010;48:26871.
[79] Gamaly EG, Davies BL, Kolev VZ, Madsen NR, Duering M, Rode AV. Ablation [112] Nayak BK, Gupta MC. Self-organized micro/macro structures in metal
of metals with picosecond laser pulses: evidence of long lived non- surfaces by ultrafast laser irradiation. Opt Lasers Eng 2010;48:9409.
equilibrium surface states. Laser Part Beams 2005;23:16776. [113] Leitz KH, Redlingshofer B, Reg Y, Otto A, Schmidt M. Metal ablation with
[80] Zoppel S, Merz R, Zehetner J, Reider GA. Enhancement of laser ablation yield short and ultrashort pulses. Phys Procedia 2011;12:2308.
by two color excitation. Appl Phys A 2005;81:84750. [114] Wang W, Mei X, Jiang G, Wang K, Yang C. Effect of lm properties on the
[81] Michalowski A, Walter D, Dausinger F, Graf T. Melt dynamics and hole material removing characteristics in femtosecond laser rear side ablation of
formation during drilling with ultrashort pulses. J Laser Micro/Nanoeng chromium lm. Opt Laser Technol 2012;44:1538.
2008;3(3):2115. [115] Dong Y, Molian P. Femtosecond pulsed laser ablation of 3CSiC thin lm on
[82] Cheng J, Perie W, Sharp M, Edwardso SP, Semaltianos NG, Dearden G, et al. silicon. Appl Phys A 2003;77:83946.
Single-pulse drilling study on Au, Al and Ti alloy by using a picosecond laser. [116] Borowiec A, Haugen HK. Femtosecond laser micromachining of grooves in
Appl Phys A 2009;95:73946. indium phosphide. Appl Phys A 2004;79:5219.
[83] Hu W, Shin YC, King GB. Micromachining of metals alloys and ceramics by [117] Amer MS, El-Ashrt MA, Dosser LR, Hix KE, Maguire JF, Irwin C. Femtosecond
picosecond laser ablation. J Manuf Sci Eng 2010;132:01100917. versus nanosecond laser machining: comparison of induced stresses and
[84] Muhammad N, Whitehead D, Boor A, Openlander W, Liu Z, Li L. Picosecond structural changes in silicon wafers. Appl Surf Sci 2005;242:1627.
laser micromachining of nitinol and platinumiridium alloy for coronary [118] Tran DV, Zheng HY, Lam YC, Murukeshan VM, Chai JC, Hardt DE. Femtosecond
stent applications. Appl Phys A 2012;106(3):60717. laser-induced damage morphologies of crystalline silicon by sub-threshold
[85] Vukelic S, Kongsuwan P, Yao YL. Ultrafast laser induced structural modica- pulses. Opt Lasers Eng 2005;43:97786.
tion of fused silicaPart I: feature formation mechanisms. J Manuf Sci Eng [119] Hwang DJ, Grigoropoulos CP. Efciency of silicon micromachining by femto-
2010;132:06101218. second laser pulses in ambient air. J Appl Phys 2006;99:08310115.
[86] Momma C, Knop U, Nolte S. Laser cutting of slotted tube coronary stents [120] Matsumura T, Nakatani T, Yagi T. Deep drilling on a silicon plate with a
state-of-the-art and future developments. Prog Biomed Res 1999:3944. femtosecond laser: experiment and model analysis. Appl Phys A
[87] Zhu X, Naumov AY, Villeneuve DM, Corkum PB. Inuence of laser parameters 2007;86:10714.
and material properties on micro drilling with femtosecond laser pulses. [121] Zhi C, Xing FU, Na G, Xiaotang HU. Effects of parameters in femtosecond laser
Appl Phys A 1999;69:36771.
micromachining on ablation in silicon. Trans Tianjin Univ 2009;15:2258.
[88] Banks PS, Feit MD, Rubenchik AM, Sturart BC, Perry MD. Materials effects in
[122] Dalili A, Tan B, Venkatakrishnan K. Silicon wafer surface patterning using
ultra-short pulse laser drilling of metals. Appl Phys A 1999;69(1):37780.
femtosecond laser radiation below ablation threshold. Opt Lasers Eng
[89] Wellershoff SS, Hohlfeld J, Gudde J, Matthias E. The role of electron-phonon
2010;48:34653.
coupling in femtosecond laser damage of metals. Appl Phys A
[123] Yahng JS, Jeoung SC. Silicon substrate temperature effects on surface rough-
1999;69:99107.
ness induced by ultrafast laser processing. Opt Lasers Eng 2011;49:10404.
[90] Nolte S, Momma C, Kamlage G, Ostendorf A, Fallnich C, Alvensleben FV, et al.
[124] Tabib-Azar M, Sutapan B, Huff M. Applications of TiNi thin lm shape
Polarization effects in ultrashort-pulse laser drilling. Appl Phys A
memory alloys in micro-opto-electro-mechanical system. Sens Actuator
1999;68:5637.
1999;77:348.
[91] Dou K, Parkhill RL, Wu J, Knobbe ET. Surface microstructuring of aluminium
[125] Li C, Nikumb S, Wong F. An optimal process of femtosecond laser cutting of
alloy 2024 using femtosecond excimer laser irradiation. IEEE J Sel Top
NiTi shape memory alloy for fabrication of miniature devices. Opt Lasers Eng
Quantum 2001;7(4):56778.
2006;44:107887.
[92] Venkatakrishnan K, Tan B, Ngoi BKA. Femtosecond pulsed laser ablation of
[126] Uppal N, Shiakolas PS. Micromachining characteristics of NiTi based shape
thin gold lm. Opt Laser Technol 2002;34:199202.
memory alloy using femtosecond laser. J Manuf Sci Eng 2008;130:03111718.
[93] Venkatakrishnan K, Tan B, Sivakumar NR. Sub-micron ablation of metallic
[127] Zheng HY, Zareena AR, Huang H, Lim GC. Studies of femtosecond laser
thin lm by femtosecond pulse laser. Opt Laser Technol 2002;34:5758.
processed Nitinol. Mater Sci Forum 2003;437438:27780.
[94] Dausinger F. Femtosecond technology for precision manufacturing: funda-
[128] Bonse J, Geu M, Baudach S, Sturm H, Kautek E. The precision of the
mental and technical aspects. RIKEN Rev 2003;50:7782.
femtosecond pulse laser ablation of TiN lms on silicon. Appl Phys A
[95] Fohl C, Dausinger F. High precision deep drilling with ultrashort pulses. In:
Proceedings of the fourth international symposium on laser precision 1999;69:399402.
microfabrication, vol. 5063; 2003. p. 34651. [129] Zhao J, Huettner B, Menschig A. Microablation with ultrashort laser pulses.
[96] Mannion P, Magee J, Coyne E, Connor GMO. Ablation thresholds in ultrafast Opt Laser Technol 2001;33:48791.
laser micromachining of common metals in air. Proc SPIE 20034708. [130] Schaffer CB, Brodeur A, Gracia JF, Mazur E. Micromachining bulk glass by use
[97] Kamlage G, Bauer T, Ostendorf A, Chichkov BN. Deep drilling of metals by of femtosecond laser pulses with nanojoule energy. Opt Lett 2001;26
femtosecond laser pulses. Appl Phys A 2003;77:30710. (2):935.
[98] Liang WL, Ngoi BKA, Lim LEN, Venkatakrishnan K, Hee CW. Micromachining [131] Ngoi BKA, Venkatakrishnan K, Tan B, Stanley P, Lim LEN. Angular dispersion
of circular ring microstructure by femtosecond laser pulses. Opt Laser compensation for acosuto-optic devices used for ultrashort-pulsed laser
Technol 2003;35:28590. micromachining. Opt Express 2001;9(4):2006.
[99] Tong T, Li J, Chen Q, Longtin JP, Tankiewicz S, Sampath S. Ultrafast laser [132] Zoubir A, Shah L, Richardson K, Richardson M. Practical uses of femtosecond
micromachining of thermal sprayed coatings for microheaters: design, laser micro materials processing. Appl Phys A 2003;77:3115.
fabrication and characterization. Sens Actuator A 2004;114:10211. [133] Konorov SO, Fedotov E, Zheltikov AM. Three dimensional reversible micro-
[100] Ho SF, Ngoi BKA. Sub-microdrilling with ultrafast pulse laser interference. machining with subnanojoule femtosecond pulses based on two-photon
Appl Phys B 2004;79:99102. photochromism. Appl Phys B 2003;76:70710.
[101] Groenendijk M, Meijer J. Microstructuring using femtosecond pulsed laser [134] Ran AN, Yan LI, Ping Y, Ying G, Hong Y, Huang GQ. Laser micro hole drilling of
ablation. J Laser Appl 2006;18(3):22735. soda lime glass with femtosecond pulses. Chin Phys Lett 2004;21
[102] Kim J, Na S. Metal thin lm ablation with femtosecond pulsed laser. Opt Laser (12):24658.
Technol 2007;39:14438. [135] Hwang DJ, Choi TY, Grigoropoulos CP. Liquid assisted femtosecond laser
[103] Zheng HY, Lam YC, Sundarraman C, Tran DV. Inuence of substrate cooling on drilling of straight and three dimensional microchannels in glass. Appl Phys A
femtosecond laser machined hole depth and diameter. Appl Phys A 2004;79:60512.
2007;89:55963. [136] Yashkir Y, Liu Q. Experimental and theoretical study of the laser micro-
[104] Barcikowski S, Hahn A, Kabashin AV, Chichkov BN. Properties of nanoparti- machining of glass using a high-repetition-rate ultrafast laser. Proc SPIE
cles generated during femtosecond laser machining in air and water. Appl 2006110.
Phys A 2007;87:4755. [137] Ding L, Blackwell R, Kunjler JG, Knox WH. Large refractive index change in
[105] Weck A, Crawford THR, Wilkinson DS, Haugen HS, Preston JS. Laser drilling of silicon-based and non-silicone based hydrogel polymers induced by femto-
high aspect ratio holes in copper with femtosecond, picosecond and second laser micro-machining. Opt Express 2006;14(24):119019.
nanosecond pulses. Appl Phys A 2008;90:53743. [138] Cheng Y, Tsai HL, Sugioka K, Midorikawa K. Fabrication of 3D microoptical
[106] Dong-qing Y, Ming Z, Lan C. Femtosecond laser micromachining of an Au/Cr lenses in photosensitive glass using femtosecond laser micromachining. Appl
lm nanostack. Laser Phys 2008;18(9):10927. Phys A 2006;85:114.
[107] Yahng JS, Nam JR, Jeoung SC. The inuence of substrate temperature on [139] Wang Z, Sugioka K, Midorikawa K. Three dimensional integration of micro-
femtosecond laser micro-processing of silicon, stainless steel and glass. Opt optical components buried inside photosensitive glass by femtosecond laser
Lasers Eng 2009;47:81520. direct writing. Appl Phys A 2007;89:9515.
122 S. Mishra, V. Yadava / Optics and Lasers in Engineering 73 (2015) 89122

[140] Chen H, Chen X, Zhang Y, Xia Y. Ablation induced by single and multiple- [166] Paterson C, Holmes AS, Smith RW. Excimer laser ablation of microstructures:
femtosecond laser pulses in lithium niobate. Laser Phys 2007;17 a numerical model. J Appl Phys 1999;86(11):653846.
(12):137881. [167] Fan CH, Longtin JP. Modeling optical breakdown in dielectric during ultrafast
[141] Li C, Lee S, Nikumb S. Femtosecond laser drilling of alumina wafers. J Electron laser processing. Appl Opt 2001;40:312431.
Mater 2009;38(9):200612. [168] Zhang W, Yao YL, Chen K. Modelling and analysis of UV laser micromachining
[142] Wang XC, Zheng HY, Chu PL, Tan JL, The KM, Liu T, et al. Femtosecond laser of copper. Int J Adv Manuf Technol 2001;18:32331.
drilling of alumina ceramic substrates. Appl Phys A 2010;101:2718. [169] Schafer C, Urbassek HM. Metal ablation by picosecond laser pulses: a hybrid
[143] Grasset FM, Bellouard Y. Femtosecond laser micromachining of fused silica simulation. Phys Rev B 2002;66:11540418.
molds. Opt Express 2010;18(21):2182740. [170] Tokarev VN, Lopez J, Lazare S, Weisbuch F. High aspect ratio microdrilling of
[144] Zhang Y, Lowe RM, Harvey E, Hannaford P, Endo A. High aspect-ratio polymers with UV laser ablation: experiment with analytical model 2003.
micromachining of polymers with an ultrafast laser. Appl Surf Sci Appl Phys A 2003;76:38596.
2002;186:34551. [171] Itina TE, Hermann J, Delaporte P, Sentis M. Modeling of metals ablation
[145] Tan B, Venkatakrishnan K, Sivakumar NR, Gan GK. Laser drilling of thick induced by ultrashort laser pulses. Thin Solid Films 2004;453454:5137.
material using femtosecond pulse with a focus of dual-frequency beam. Opt [172] Jiang L, Tsai HL. Improved two temperature model and its application in
Laser Technol 2003;35:199202. ultrashort laser of metal lms. J Heat Transf 2005;127:116773.
[146] Aguilar CA, Lu Y, Mao S, Chen S. Direct micro-patterning of biodegradable [173] Xiang H, Fu J, Chen Z. 3D nite element modeling of laser machining PMMA.
polymers using ultraviolet and femtosecond lasers. Biomaterials
In: Proceedings of the 1st IEEE international conference on nano/micro
2005;26:76429.
engineering molecular system; 2006. p. 9426.
[147] Kim TN, Campbell K, Groisman A, Kleinfeld D, Schaffer CB. Femtosecond laser
[174] Bulgakova NM, Burakov IM, Meshcheryakov YP, Stoian R, Rosenfeld A, Hertel
drilled capillary integrated into a microuidic device. Appl Phys Lett
IV. Theoretical models and qualitative interpretations of fs laser material
2005;86:20110613.
processing. J Micro/Nanoeng 2007;2(1):7686.
[148] Sowa S, Watanabe W, Tamaki T. Symmetric waveguides in poly (methyl
[175] Tani G, Orazi L, Fortunato A, Cuccolini G. Laser ablation of metals: 3D process
methacrylate) fabricated by femtosecond laser pulses. Opt Express 2005;14
(1):2927. simulation for industrial applications. J Manuf Sci Eng
[149] Malinauakas M, Zukauskas A, Bickauskaite G, Gadonas R, Juodkazis S. 2008;130:0311110311111.
Mechanisms of three-dimensional structuring of photopolymers by tightly [176] Cheng J, Perrie W, Wu B, Tao S, Edwardson SP, Dearden G, et al. Ablation
focused femtosecond laser pulses. Opt Express 2010;18(10):1020921. mechanism study on metallic materials with a 10 ps laser under high uence.
[150] Hashida M, Mishima H, Tokita S, Sakabe S. Non-thermal ablation of expanded Appl Surf Sci 2009;255:81715.
polytetrauoroethylene with an intense femtosecond-pulse laser. Opt [177] Ho CY, Wen MY, Tsai YH. Investigation into nanosecond laser drilling of
Express 2009;17(15):1311621. alumina ceramics using three dimensional model. J Aust Ceram Soc 2009;45
[151] Mendonca CR, Cerami LR, Shih T, Tilghman RW, Baldacchini T, Mazur E. (2):5963.
Femtosecond laser waveguide micromachining of PMMA lms with azoaro- [178] Lee D, Asibu EK. Numerical analysis of ultrashort pulse laser material
matic chromophores. Opt Express 2008;16(1):2006. interaction using ABAQUS. J Manuf Sci Eng 2009;131:021005115.
[152] Rao RV. Advanced modeling and optimization of manufacturing processes. [179] Rejab MRM, Mon TT, Rashid MFF, Shalahim NSM, Ismail MF. Virtual laser
London: Springer Verlag Limited; 2011. micromachining of MEMS components. Int J Recent Trends Eng 2009;1
[153] Ganesh RK, Bowley WW, Bellantone RR, Hahn Y. A model for laser hole (5):1059.
drilling in metals. J Comput Phys 1996;125:16176. [180] Shalahim NSM, Mon TT, Ismail MF, Rashid MFF, Rejab MRM. Finite element
[154] Ir. Sivarao, Shukor, Anand TJS, Ammar. DOE based statistical approaches in simulation of laser-micromachining. In: Proceedings of the international
modeling of laser processing-review and suggestion. Int J Eng Technol multiconference of engineers and computer scientists, Hong Kong; 2010.
2010;10:18. [181] Nisar S, Sheikh MA, Pinkerton AJ, Safdar S. The effect of laser beam geometry
[155] Dubey AK, Yadava V. Laser beam machininga review. Int J Mach Tools on cut path deviation in diode laser chip free cutting of glass. J Manuf Sci Eng
Manuf 2007;48:60928. 2010;132:011002219.
[156] Chen YH, Tam SC, Chen WL, Zheng HY. Application of taguchi method in the [182] Hu W, Shin YC, King G. Modeling of multi-burst mode pico-second laser
optimization of laser micro engraving of Photomasks. Int J Mater Prod ablation for improved material removal rate. Appl Phys A 2010;98:40715.
Technol 1996;11(34):33344. [183] Gupta MC, Gadag BLS, Chou KC. Laser micromachining for fatigue and
[157] Chen K, Yao YL. Process optimization in pulsed laser micromachining with fracture mechanics applications. Opt Lasers Eng 2010;48:4417.
applications in medical device manufacturing. Int J Adv Manuf Technol [184] Vasantgadkar NA, Bhandarkar UV, Joshi SS. A nite element model to predict
2000;16:2439. the ablation depth in pulsed laser ablation. Thin Solid Films
[158] Kuar AS, Doloi B, Bhattacharyya B. Modelling and analysis of pulsed Nd: YAG 2010;519:142130.
laser machining characteristics during micro drilling of zirconia (ZrO2). Int J [185] Huang J, Zhang Y, Chen JK, Yang M. Modeling of ultrafast phase change
Mach Tools Manuf 2006;46:130110.
processes in a thin metal lm irradiated by femtosecond laser pulse trains. J
[159] Dhupal D, Doloi B, Bhattacharyya B. Pulsed Nd:YAG laser turning of micro-
Heat Transf 2011;133:03100318.
groove on aluminium oxide ceramic (Al2O3). Int J Mach Tools Manuf
[186] Zadeh LA. Toward a theory of fuzzy information granulation and its centrality
2008;48:23648.
in human reasoning and fuzzy logic. Fuzzy Sets Syst 1997;90:11127.
[160] Dhupa Dl, Doloi B, Bhattacharyya B. Parametric analysis and optimization of
[187] Yousef BF, Knopf GK, Bordatchev EV, Nikumb SS. Neural network modeling
Nd:YAG laser micro grooving of aluminium titanate (Al2TiO5) ceramics. Int J
and analysis of the material removal process during laser machining. Int J
Adv Manuf Technol 2008;36:88393.
[161] Biswas R, Kuar AS, Sarkar S, Mitra S. A parametric study of pulsed Nd:YAG Adv Manuf Technol 2006;22:4153.
laser micro-drilling of gamma-titanium aluminide. Opt Laser Technol [188] Dhara SK, Kuar AS, Mitra S. An articial neural network approach on
2010;42:2331. parametric optimization of laser micro-machining of die-steel. Int J Adv
[162] Bogaerts A, Chen Z, Gijbels R, Vertes A. Laser ablation for analytical sampling: Manuf Technol 2008;39:3946.
What can we learn from modeling? Spectrochim Acta Part B [189] Karazi SM, Issa A, Brabazon D. Comparison of ANN and DoE for the prediction
2003;58:186793. of laser-machined micro-channel dimensions. Opt Lasers Eng
[163] Willis DA, Xu X. Heat transfer and phase change during picosecond laser 2009;47:95664.
ablation of nickel. Int J Heat Mass Transf 2002;45:39118. [190] Ciurana J, Arias G, Ozel T. Neural network modeling and particle swarm
[164] Xu S, Chen G, Song KH. Experimental and numerical investigation of heat optimization (PSO) of process parameters in pulsed laser micromachining of
transfer and phase change phenomena during excimer laser interaction with hardened AISI H13 steel. Mater Manuf Process 2009;24(3):35868.
nickel. Int J Heat Mass Transf 1999;42:137182. [191] Biswas R, Kuar AS, Biswas SK, Mitra S. Articial neural network modelling of
[165] Stoneham AM, Ramos MMD, Ribeiro RM. The mesoscopic modeling of laser Nd:YAG laser microdrilling on titanium nitridealumina composite. J Eng
ablation. Appl Phys A 1999;69(1):5816. Manuf 2009;224:47382.