Laser microshaping: Fundamentals, practical applications, and future prospects

Today the laser technologies are widely used in the processing of materials, including also the precise microshaping. Deep UV lasers have very good prospects in the lithography, used for fabrication of chips, while the femtosecond pulsed lasers open the new horizons for the microand submicroprofilling. But these are the field of the future prospects. As for today state-of-the-art, contribution to the application of lasers for these purposes are the numerous advantages of the laser techniques over the traditional methods, such as: — wide variety of materials to be treated, — possibility of achieving narrow cuts and practically waste-free separation, — small heat-affected zone, — minimal mechanical effect and minimum thermal deformations, — possibility of microshaping along a complex profile in two, or even three, dimensions, — possibility of fast and precise process switch-on and off and to include in the processing feedback on the treated parameters.