Author(s)

Gabriel de la Rosa-Santana¹, Jose Alfredo Alvarez-Chavez², Hector R. Morano-Okuno¹, Angel J. Morales-Ramirez², Esmeralda Uribe³

¹Instituto Tecnologico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey, Campus Estado de Mexico, Atizapan de Zaragoza, Mexico.
²Instituto Politecnico Nacional-Centro de Investigacion e InnovacionTecnologica (CIITEC-IPN), Mexico City, Mexico.
³Instituto Tecnologico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey, Campus Queretaro, Santiago de Queretaro, Mexico.

Recently, a number of studies have focused on micro-manufacturing processes, which find use in a variety of applications, including the production of microelectromechanical systems (MEMS). The process of ablation in materials is mainly governed by the laser source and scanning speed. The rate of material ablation is influenced by chemical and physical properties. In this work, the energy from a CO₂ laser was used to ablate three different materials, namely, stainless steel 304L, a thin film of amorphous aluminum oxide (Al₂O₃), and pure silicon, due to their wide use in MEMS technology. The laser parameters used were an average power of 18 W and a spot size of 200 μm. The maximum depth during the photomechanical ablation process was 72 μm in the case of 304L steel and 77 μm in the case of the Al₂O₃ thin film for a scan rate of 24 mm/min. However, at the same scan rate, silicon did not exhibit any penetration. As expected, while increasing scanning speed the ablation depth decreases due to reduced interaction time between laser and material. The theoretical ytterbium fiber laser shown in this study can thus be employed in the manufacturing of a wide variety of materials used in the production of MEMS as well as those used in clean energy technologies.

Laser Ablation, MEMS, Ytterbium-Doped Fiber Laser, Thin Film

de la Rosa-Santana, G. , Alvarez-Chavez, J. , Morano-Okuno, H. , Morales-Ramirez, A. and Uribe, E. (2016) Photomechanical Ablation of 304L Stainless Steel, Aluminum Oxide (Al₂O₃) Thin Film, and Pure Silicon. Optics and Photonics Journal, 6, 275-288. doi: 10.4236/opj.2016.610028.