This study presents a novel numerical model for laser ablation and laser damage in glass including beam propagation and nonlinear absorption of multiple incident ultrashort laser pulses. The laser ablation and damage in the glass cutting process with a picosecond pulsed laser was studied. The numerical results were in good agreement with our experimental observations, thereby revealing the damage mechanism induced by laser ablation. Beam propagation effects such as interference, diffraction and refraction, play a major role in the evolution of the crater structure and the damage region. There are three different damage regions, a thin layer and two different kinds of spikes. Moreover, the electronic damage mechanism was verified and distinguished from heat modification using the experimental results with different pulse spatial overlaps.
Processing of thin and ultra-thin glass displays is becoming more important in the fast increasing market of display manufacturing. As conventional technologies such as mechanical scribing followed by manual breaking mostly lead to bad edge quality and thus to a huge amount of reject, other processes like ablation processes with picosecond lasers are getting more and more interesting. However processing with ultrashort pulsed lasers partially leads to unwanted effects which should be understood in a better way by means of intensive basic research. Therefore the ablation mechanism of ultrashort pulses on transparent materials was investigated in this research project. On the one hand the ablation mechanism was analyzed in a simulative way by means of rate equations on the other hand by laboratory experiments
Industrial applications have driven the commercial laser market for decades. The widespread usage of CW lasers in welding and cutting, in particular at kilowatt average powers, is complemented by the success of pulsed lasers in applications where excessive heat is undesired and where sublimation rather than melting provides ultimate precision in manufacturing. During the past years, ultrafast lasers have become established industrial tools for cold, yet efficient micro machining. They nowadays provide the desired tens of megawatt peak powers at average powers of several tens of watts as required to reach sufficient productivity, at a total cost of ownership below 10 cent (€ or $) per watt and hour of operation. TRUMPF has pioneered ultrafast machining with new lasers based on Yb:YAG disk modules since the beginning of this millennium. This article gives a brief review of the state of the art of ultrafast disk lasers, amplifiers and their industrial applications.
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