Crack-free femtosecond laser processing of lithium niobate benefited by high substrate temperature

Femtosecond lasers (fs-lasers) offer a powerful and advantageous tool for fabricating a very large variety of materials. When processing transparent dielectrics, structural defects, such as cracks and broken edges, are always present, thus restricting the precision of fs-laser processing. In this paper, the formation and suppression mechanism of fs-laser induced structural defects are systematically studied. We demonstrate a novel method to improve the processing precision of lithium niobate (LiNbO3) by elevating the substrate temperature. A crack-free ablation hole with a smooth edge was fabricated at the substrate temperature of 1000 °C. Our results show that the increase of absorptivity and the suppression of incubation effects are responsible for the high precision processing at a high substrate temperature, which not only inhibits the formation of defects, but also additionally increases the efficiency of fs-laser processing. This work provides a simple method to efficiently suppress the defect formation induced by fs-laser in LiNbO3 samples, paving the way for a new technique for high precision fs-laser processing.