Micromanufacturing Engineering and Technology

Chapter 4 Laser Micro-Structuring

Arnold Gillner

Introduction

In the production of micro-scaled products and micro-replication tools, laser ablation is becoming an ever more important tool, which is able to generate structure sizes in the range of 10–100 μm, not only in metals but also in hard and ultra-hard materials such as tungsten carbide and ceramics. Especially for micro-machining, laser processes qualify for a wide range of materials, from semiconductors in the field of micro-electronics, to hard materials such as tungsten carbide for tool technology, to very weak and soft materials such as polymers for medical products. Even ceramics, glass and diamond can be processed with laser technologies with accuracies better than 10 μm. In ...