Butkute, A.; Sirutkaitis, R.; Gailevičius, D.; Paipulas, D.; Sirutkaitis, V. Sapphire Selective Laser Etching Dependence on Radiation Wavelength and Etchant. Preprints2022, 2022100178. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints202210.0178.v1
APA Style
Butkute, A., Sirutkaitis, R., Gailevičius, D., Paipulas, D., & Sirutkaitis, V. (2022). Sapphire Selective Laser Etching Dependence on Radiation Wavelength and Etchant. Preprints. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints202210.0178.v1
Chicago/Turabian Style
Butkute, A., Domas Paipulas and Valdas Sirutkaitis. 2022 "Sapphire Selective Laser Etching Dependence on Radiation Wavelength and Etchant" Preprints. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints202210.0178.v1
Abstract
Transparent and high-hardness materials have become the object of wide interest. Most notably, it concerns technical glasses and crystals. A notable example is a sapphire – one of the most rigid materials having impressive mechanical stability and good optical properties. Nonetheless, using this material for 3D micro-fabrication is not straightforward due to its brittle nature. On the microscale, selective laser etching (SLE) technology is an appropriate approach for such media. Therefore, we present our research on c-cut crystalline sapphire microprocessing by using femtosecond radiation-induced SLE. Here we demonstrate a comparison between different wavelength radiation (1030 nm, 515 nm, 343 nm) usage for modification inscription and various etchants (Hydrofloridic acid, Sodium Hydroxide, Potassium Hydroxide and Sulphuric and Phosphoric acid mixture) comparison. We show that regular SLE etchants such as Hydrofluoric acid or Potassium Hydroxide are unsuitable materials for selective sapphire laser etching. Meanwhile, a 78% sulphuric and 22% phosphoric acid mixture at 270°C temperature is a good alternative for this process. We present the changes in the material after the separate processing steps. Finally, a protocol for advanced sapphire structure formation and a few exemplary structures are presented.
Keywords
Selective Laser Etching; 3D Laser Microfabrication; Crystals Microprocessing; Sapphire 3D structures; Femtosecond Laser Microprocessing
Subject
Chemistry and Materials Science, Electronic, Optical and Magnetic Materials
Copyright:
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
