Femtosecond laser cutting ultra thin fused silica

Cutting of ultra thin fused silica sheets is a significant technological challenge because of these materials' brittleness and high ablation threshold. Femtosecond laser offer a great prospect for meeting this challenge. In this paper, femtosecond laser with a central wavelength of 1030 nm, a pulse duration 230 fs ablation process for cutting fused silica sheets of thickness 100 mu m. To improve cutting quality and efficiency, the experiments through optimization of laser processing parameters, including the laser energy, repetition rate and scanning speed, were carried out. And a two-step processing method was proposed for improving the quality of cross-section surface. According to experimental results, the edge along the edges without chipping and smooth cross-section surface were achieved by this method.