Experimental investigation of high aspect ratio tubular microstructuring of glass by means of picosecond Bessel vortices

We report on experiments on glass material modification using nondiffractive high-order picosecond pulsed Bessel beams, generated by a spatial light phase modulator and then suitably demagnified. We investigate the possibility to generate in single-shot tubular microstructures across 100-μm-thin borosilicate glass, when a suitable energy range is considered, and we highlight the effect of the unstable propagation regime for very high input energies, leading to a breakup of the tubular microstructure. The micromachined glass samples are observed on their top and bottom surfaces as well as longitudinally along their thickness. For the conical beam geometry used, we observe no internal material modification pattern with pulses in the femtosecond range. A comparison with glass machining by means of a focused ring-shaped beam is also presented. The results highlight the role of the conical energy flux for single-shot smooth high aspect ratio material modification in a regime where nonlinear Kerr effects are absent.

[1]  A. Couairon,et al.  Plasma absorption evidence via chirped pulse spectral transmission measurements , 2015 .

[2]  Takashi Inoue,et al.  The characteristics of laser micro drilling using a Bessel beam , 2006 .

[3]  Craig B. Arnold,et al.  Bessel and annular beams for materials processing , 2012 .

[4]  A. Couairon,et al.  Femtosecond filamentation in transparent media , 2007 .

[5]  Razvan Stoian,et al.  Single-shot high aspect ratio bulk nanostructuring of fused silica using chirp- controlled ultrafast laser Bessel beams , 2014 .

[6]  P. Polynkin,et al.  Micromachining of borosilicate glass surfaces using femtosecond higher-order Bessel beams , 2014 .

[7]  Ottavia Jedrkiewicz,et al.  Laser micro- and nanostructuring using femtosecond Bessel beams , 2011 .

[8]  P Di Trapani,et al.  Near-field dynamics of ultrashort pulsed Bessel beams in media with Kerr nonlinearity. , 2006, Physical review. E, Statistical, nonlinear, and soft matter physics.

[9]  Selcuk Akturk,et al.  Fabrication of nanometer-size structures in metal thin films using femtosecond laser Bessel beams , 2012 .

[10]  A. Piskarskas,et al.  Observation of conical waves in focusing, dispersive, and dissipative Kerr media. , 2007, Physical review letters.

[11]  Fabrication of microcapillaries in fused silica using axicon focusing of femtosecond laser radiation and chemical etchingion/ms , 2013 .

[12]  Miceli,et al.  Diffraction-free beams. , 1987, Physical review letters.

[13]  F. Courvoisier,et al.  Filamentation with nonlinear Bessel vortices. , 2014, Optics express.

[14]  Roberto Osellame,et al.  Micromachining of photonic devices by femtosecond laser pulses , 2008 .

[15]  Cyril Hnatovsky,et al.  Materials processing with a tightly focused femtosecond laser vortex pulse. , 2010, Optics letters.

[16]  Maxime Jacquot,et al.  High aspect ratio nanochannel machining using single shot femtosecond Bessel beams , 2010 .

[17]  E. Mazur,et al.  Femtosecond laser micromachining in transparent materials , 2008 .

[18]  Michael Schmidt,et al.  Application of Bessel beams for ultrafast laser volume structuring of non transparent media , 2010 .

[19]  R. Osellame,et al.  Femtosecond laser microstructuring: an enabling tool for optofluidic lab‐on‐chips , 2011 .

[20]  D. Faccio,et al.  Nonlinear light-matter interaction with femtosecond high-angle Bessel beams , 2012 .

[21]  Razvan Stoian,et al.  Stressed waveguides with tubular depressed-cladding inscribed in phosphate glasses by femtosecond hollow laser beams. , 2012, Optics letters.

[22]  B. Wetzel,et al.  Femtosecond laser fabrication of micro and nano-disks in single layer graphene using vortex Bessel beams , 2013 .