Laser-induced plasma-assisted ablation and its applications

It is a high challenge to fabricate glass microstructures in Photonics and LCD industries. Different from direct ablation with ultrafast or short wavelength lasers, laser-induced-plasma-assisted ablation (LIPAA) is one of the potential candidates for transparent substrate microfabrication with conventional visible laser sources. In the processing, laser beam goes through glass substrate first and then irradiates on a solid target behind. For laser fluence above target ablation threshold, plasma generated from target ablation flies forward at a high speed. At a small target-to-substrate distance, there are strong interactions among laser light, target plasma and glass substrate at its rear side surface. With target materials deposition on glass surface or even doping into the substrate, light absorption characteristic at the interaction zone is modified, which causes the glass ablation. LIPAA is used to get color printing of characters, structures and even images on the glass substrate. It is also used to obtain the glass surface metallization for electrodes and circuits fabrication. Potential application of this technique to fabricate functional microstructures, such as micro-Total-Analysis-System (TAS) for DNA analysis and holographic diffuser for IR wireless home networking, is also discussed.