Laser ablation and micromachining with ultrashort laser pulses

The mechanisms of ultrashort-pulse laser ablation of materials are discussed, the differences to that of long laser pulses are emphasized. Ultrashort laser pulses offer high laser intensity and offer precise laser-induced breakdown threshold with reduced laser fluence. The ablation of materials with ultrashort pulses has a very limited heat-affected volume. These advantages of ultrashort laser pulses are applied in precision micromachining of various materials. Some femtosecond laser pulse micromachining results, including comparison with long pulses, are presented. Ultrashort-pulse laser micromachining may have a wide range of applications where micrometer and submicrometer feature sizes are required.