Micro-structuring of thin Titanium films with ultra-short laser pulses

Electron beam guns with approximately 10 kW power are used for drying printing colors. As exit window for the electrons, 15 mu m thin Titanium films are used, their thickness is at the current limit for industrial rolling processes. Thinner exit windows would increase the electron's transmission and therefore reduce the required acceleration voltage, power consumption, shielding against X-rays and in the end machine and processing costs. The Titanium films should locally be thinned to about 5 mu m, in the ranges of 3 mm diameter. Ultra-short laser pulses are well known for high precision micro structuring, as they offer small heat effect zones. We optimized the processing parameters and the ultra-short laser ablation of thin Titanium foils to achieve high manufacturing velocity and quality of the surface structure. Experiments with single pulse laser ablation and different spot diameter were conducted to find a connection between spot diameter and ablation threshold. The experiments show no dependency of the thresholds on the laser spot diameter.. First Experiments with different parameters were conducted to structure a three dimensional geometry in thin Titanium foils.