Laser Micro/Nano Processing of Brittle Materials

ABSTRACT

The laser micro/nano processing can be optimized through design of expert analysis (DOE). Using a Box-Behnken design (BBD) of the experimental software, 17 tests were made to explore how the laser parameters affected the microprocessing.

Theoretical calculations using Mathcad and COMSOL software were used to determine how the surface temperatures of silicon and quartz diffuse to overcome the damage of those brittle materials. It is found that the critical temperature for silicon is about (4550 K)  when applying (800 mJ) Nd:YAG laser, while it is about (3500 K) for quartz when applying (19 W) laser power.

Using DOE software, numerical optimization has been obtained to fabricate silicon microlens with numerical aperture, resolution and magnification values of (2.480), (0.38) and (46X), respectively. Similarly, the optimization to fabricate quartz microlens with numerical aperture, resolution and magnification values of (0.550), (0.48) and (16 X), respectively.

It is also found that the laser beam can be divided to more than 60 microbeams using a micromachining of quartz sheet.

Due to the controllable laser micro/nano machining process, potential  and promising applications of silicon nanoparticles and silicon/quartz MLA in optoelectronics and biological imaging can be adopted.