Absorption behavior of ceramic materials irradiated with excimer lasers

Various investigations in the field of material processing indicate that the characteristics of excimer lasers such as emission of radiation in the UV and short pulse duration in the range of some 10 ns with very high pulse intensities lead to several advantages for processing thermally sensitive workpieces. Nevertheless various questions regarding the complex interaction mechanism between radiation and solids cannot be answered sufficiently. This paper deals with an introduction to the absorption behaviour of brittle materials during laser irradiation. Furthermore this paper discusses experimental results which show the influence of different process parameters on the removal behaviour of ceramic materials. To determine energy losses due to plasma absorption or reflection losses different measurement methods are described to estimate the efficiency of the removal process. Finally some laser supported techniques are presented aimed at optimizing the removal result.