Laser back-writing of steel for fabrication of micro-channels on a quartz substrate

The present study aimed to apply laser back-writing for fabricating micro-channels. First, a Q -switched Nd:YAG laser with fundamental wavelength was used, and a steel target was ablated and evaporated onto a quartz substrate by focusing the laser pulses on the target through the quartz substrate. Then, micro-channels on the quartz were machined with laser-ablated plasma interaction with the substrate. In addition, the surface plasma ablated region was characterized by scanning electron microscopy, a surface profilometer, and energy dispersive x-ray spectrometry. Finally, UV-Vis spectroscopy was used to measure the presence of metal nanoparticles with their typical surface plasmon resonance bands on the interaction area.