TRUMPF Laser- und Systemtechnik GmbH

The industrial maturity of ultrashort pulsed lasers has triggered the development of a plethora of material processing strategies. Recently, the combination of these remarkable temporal pulse properties with advanced structured light concepts has led to breakthroughs in the development of laser application methods, which will now gradually reach industrial environments. We review the efficient generation of customized focus distributions from the near-IR down to the deep UV, e.g., based on nondiffracting beams and three-dimensional-beam splitters, and demonstrate their impact for micro- and nanomachining of a wide range of materials. In the beam shaping concepts presented, special attention was paid to suitability for both high energies and high powers.

The separation of complex inner and outer contours of glass articles with curved surfaces using ultrashort pulsed lasers is reported. Single-pass, full-thickness modifications along the entire substrate are achieved using a processing optics that allows for beam shaping of non-diffracting beams and, addnl., for aberration compensation of phase distortions occurring at the curved interface. The glass articles finally separated by thermal stress or via selective etching meet the demands of the medical industry in terms of micro-debris, surface quality, and processing speed.

A procedure and optical concept is introduced for ultrashort pulsed laser cleaving of transparent materials with tailored edges in a single pass. The procedure is based on holog. splitting a number of foci along the desired edge geometry including C-shaped edges with local 45-deg tangential angles to the surface. Single-pass, full thickness laser modifications are achieved requiring single-side access to the workpiece only without inclining the optical head. After having induced laser modifications with feed rates of ~ 1 m/s actual separation is performed using a selective etching strategy.