Femtosecond Laser Processing Overcomes Barriers for Use in Medical Device Manufacturing

Abstract Ultra-short femtosecond laser technology offers sub-400 fs pulses, high beam quality, and peak power that enables a high quality, cold ablation cutting process rather than a melt ejection process. Resulting cuts require minimal post processing and the small beam size allows machining of very fine details. The edge quality possible with a femtosecond laser for both metals and plastics makes it useful for machining heart, brain, and eye stents (both nitinol and cobalt-chrome), catheters, heart valves, and polymer tubing.