Laser micromachining - New developments and applications

Excimer laser micromachining has developed into a mature production method and many industrial applications such as the drilling of ink-jet printer nozzles, production of sensors and the manufacture of display panels now routinely use excimer laser microprocessing in production environments. The important concepts of excimer laser micromachining systems are described and the novel methods which have been developed in this area are presented. In particular, techniques for the production of complex, multi-level 3D microstructures are described and examples of such features are used to illustrate the relevant applications. Furthermore, some initial micromachining results from a sub-nanosecond, solid-state fibre laser are presented to highlight the rapidly-growing area of laser microprocessing using ultra-short pulse lasers.