Femtosecond laser micromachining can be used either to remove materials or to change a material's properties, and can be applied to both absorptive and transparent substances. Over the past decade, this technique has been used in a broad range of applications, from waveguide fabrication to cell ablation. This review describes the physical mechanisms and the main experimental parameters involved in the femtosecond laser micromachining of transparent materials, and important emerging applications of the technology. Interactions between laser and matter are fascinating and have found a wide range of applications. This article gives an overview of the fundamental physical mechanisms in the processing of transparent materials using ultrafast lasers, as well as important emerging applications of the technology.

Femtosecond laser micromachining in transparent materials

When femtosecond laser pulses are focused tightly into a transparent material, the intensity in the focal volume can become high enough to cause nonlinear absorption of laser energy. The absorption, in turn, can lead to permanent structural or chemical changes. Such changes can be used for micromachining bulk transparent materials. Applications include data storage and the writing of waveguides and waveguide splitters in bulk glass, fabrication of micromechanical devices in polymers, and subcellular photodisruption inside single cells. Article not available.

Femtosecond Laser Micromachining in Transparent Materials

The unique characteristics of ultrafast lasers, such as picosecond and femtosecond lasers, have opened up new avenues in materials processing that employ ultrashort pulse widths and extremely high peak intensities. Thus, ultrafast lasers are currently used widely for both fundamental research and practical applications. This review describes the characteristics of ultrafast laser processing and the recent advancements and applications of both surface and volume processing. Surface processing includes micromachining, micro- and nanostructuring, and nanoablation, while volume processing includes two-photon polymerization and three-dimensional (3D) processing within transparent materials. Commercial and industrial applications of ultrafast laser processing are also introduced, and a summary of the technology with future outlooks are also given. Scientists in Asia have reviewed the role of ultrafast lasers in materials processing. Koji Sugioka from RIKEN in Japan and Ya Cheng from the Shanghai Institute of Optics and Fine Mechanics in China describe how femtosecond and picosecond lasers can be used to perform useful tasks in both surface and volume processing. Such lasers can cut, drill and ablate a variety of materials with high precision, including metals, semiconductors, ceramics and glasses. They can also polymerize organic materials that contain a suitable photosensitizer and can three-dimensionally process inside transparent materials such as glass, and are already being used to fabricate medical stents, repair photomasks, drill ink-jet nozzles and pattern solar cells. The researchers also explain the characteristics of such lasers and the interaction of ultrashort, intense pulses of light with matter.

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Ultrafast lasers—reliable tools for advanced materials processing

The mechanisms of ultrashort-pulse laser ablation of materials are discussed, and the differences to that of long laser pulses are emphasized. Ultrashort laser pulses offer both high laser intensity and precise laser-induced breakdown threshold with reduced laser fluence. The ablation of materials with ultrashort pulses has a very limited heat-affected volume. The advantages of ultrashort laser pulses are applied in precision micromachining of various materials. Some femtosecond laser pulse micromachining results, including comparison with long pulses, are presented. Ultrashort-pulse laser micromachining may have a wide range of applications where micrometer and submicrometer feature sizes are required.

Laser ablation and micromachining with ultrashort laser pulses

Ablation of metal targets by Ti:sapphire laser radiation is studied. The ablation depth per pulse is measured for laser pulse durations between 150 fs and 30 ps and fluences ranging from the ablation threshold ∼0.1 J/cm2 up to 10 J/cm2. Two different ablation regimes are observed for the first time. In both cases the ablation depth per pulse depends logarithmically on the laser fluence. A simple theoretical model for a qualitative description of the experimental results is presented.

Ablation of metals by ultrashort laser pulses

We report a direct observation of the predicted polarity reversal due to the Gouy phase shift for single-cycle terahertz pulses passing through a focus.

Direct Observation of the Gouy Phase Shift with Single-Cycle Terahertz Pulses

Summary form only given. Advances in the generation and detection of terahertz (THz) radiation have made it possible to investigate many of the propagation characteristics of wide bandwidth single-cycle electromagnetic pulses. In particular, the effects of diffraction on the temporal profile of such pulses has received attention both theoretically and experimentally. Recently it has been pointed out that the Gouy phase shift of electromagnetic beams should result in a polarity reversal for a terahertz pulse as it passes through a focus. In this paper we report the first clear and unambiguous observation of the Gouy effect with single-cycle terahertz pulses.

Direct observation of the Gouy phase shift with single-cycle terahertz pulses

A novel stretcher–compressor design for chirped-pulse amplification systems is presented. The stretcher, which incorporates high-groove-density gratings and an intragrating prism pair, is shown to be highly cubic-phase tunable. Using a hybrid stretcher with 2400-line/mm gratings and off-the-shelf prisms, we have demonstrated amplification of sub-100-fs pulses. In addition, this cubic-phase tunability combined with the broadband efficiency of high-groove-density (2000 lines/mm) gratings allows for the possibility of a system that is tunable in wavelength.

Hybrid grating - prism stretcher - compressor system with cubic phase and wavelength tunability and decreased alignment sensitivity.

We amplified 160-fs pulses at a repetition rate of 10 kHz. More than 2 W of average power is generated after compression.

Amplification of femtosecond pulses at 10 kHz repetition rates in Ti:Al 2 O 3

High average power chirped pulse amplification systems

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