| Ultrafast lasers offer significant advantages for novel laser materials processing, especially at small length scales. Their extremely high optical intensity results in nonlinear laser-material interaction and energy deposition, which provide unique, non-traditional material processing capabilities. In this work, a Ti:sapphire femtosecond laser system is applied for both practical and fundamental investigations of ultrafast laser materials processing. For practical applications, experimental techniques are developed to characterize and process two novel materials: (1) silica aerogels, and (2) thermal-sprayed materials, both of which are difficult to micromachine using any conventional technique. The breakdown threshold as well as the low-level absorption coefficient of the aerogel material are measured, while the material removal rate is characterized as a function of the laser fluence and the number of laser shots. Thermal-sprayed line patterns are trimmed by synchronizing the femtosecond laser pulses with a three-dimensional motorized micro-positioning system. A trimmed line width ∼50 μm is obtained, from an original line width ∼500 μm.; In addition to developing experimental techniques for practical ultrafast laser processing of novel materials, investigations on improving the machining quality and efficiency by characterizing the nonlinear interactions between the femtosecond laser pulses and the beam delivery gas medium are also conducted in this work. A theoretical model based on the nonlinear Schrödinger equation is applied to simulate the pulse propagation under the coupled effects of two nonlinear mechanisms. The model predictions show that the beam profile can be dramatically distorted due to the nonlinear changes in the refractive index in air, which can be minimized by delivering the beam using an inert gas, particularly helium, due to its unique physical properties. Machining of copper sample by delivering the femtosecond laser pulse in four different gas media, air, nitrogen, neon, and helium, are conducted at ambient pressure. The experimental results show good agreement with the model predictions, with the best feature quality obtained in helium compared with the worst in air. |
