A Study On Laser Micro-machining Of Ceramics Material

Engineering ceramics is widely used in the national defense industry, aerospace,electronic information and daily life. The traditional methods of slicing ceramics are difficultand expensive to process ceramics such as quartz ceramic and alumina ceramic due tohardness and brittleness et al. Laser processing technology is widely focused on these yearsfor its special advantages such as touchless, capacity of micro-machine, better surface qualityand so on. In this dissertation, micro-etching of quartz ceramic and alumina ceramic by thelaser micro-processing system is studied.Firstly, make the attempt of laser etching of quartz ceramic,UV laser and fiber laser areused in the etching of quartz ceramic. Step tester and Scanning Electron Microscope are usedto test the samples processed by lasers. The information of depth, accuracy and microstructureis obtained through the test. The result shows that quartz ceramic can be processed by UVlaser and fiber laser. Compared with traditional means, quasi-three dimensional structures canbe achieved and the etching depth and area can be controlled with higher accuracy. Thedifference of photochemical and photothermy effect is the main factor of the appearance ofdifferent result of the UV laser and fiber laser.According to the test results, the surface of processed quartz ceramic is rough. Then theCO2laser is used to polish the ceramic surface. The influence of the laser scanning speed,defocusing amount on the polish quality is studied. The result shows that the CO2laser is fitto polish ceramic surface for it usually has large spot size and can be easily absorbed byceramic surface.The polish quality has strong relation with the laser parameters such as laserscanning speed and so on.In the third part, micro-machining of alumina ceramics by UV laser(355nm) wasconducted in air and water, respectively. The result shows that water-assisted etching is tendto get a better surface quality as well as higher efficiency. Vacuolus occurs duringwater-assisted etching has great help to achieve the better surface quality and higherefficiency as it could prevent the resolidifying of the etched material.