Excimer laser ablation is widely used to create a variety of 3D structures and shapes in polymeric materials. The ablated features may be used directly, as moulds that can be electroplated to form tooling, or from which replicas may be cast in elastomeric materials such as PDMS. Irrespective of how the ablated structure will be used, a common set of difficulties is often encountered, namely the redeposition of ablation debris, the non-uniform nature of the bottom of the ablated site, and limits to the aspect ratio. This paper gives experimental descriptions of these phenomena and suggests that the dynamics of the plasma plume created by laser ablation is important in understanding their behavior. Qualitative observations are presented that show that these effects can be modified depending upon the shape of the feature being ablated.

Date Published: 2 April 2004
PDF: 8 pages
Proc. SPIE 5276, Device and Process Technologies for MEMS, Microelectronics, and Photonics III, (2 April 2004); doi: 10.1117/12.529651

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 5276:
Device and Process Technologies for MEMS, Microelectronics, and Photonics III
Jung-Chih Chiao; Alex J. Hariz; David N. Jamieson; Giacinta Parish; Vijay K. Varadan, Editor(s)