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Updated: Jul 4, 2026
Laser Micromachining for Polymer Surface Topography Design
Published on: September 19, 2025
Femtosecond laser waveguide micromachining of PMMA films with azoaromatic chromophores
C R Mendonca1, L R Cerami, T Shih
1Department of Physics and Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Harvard University, 9 Oxford Street, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138, USA.
Abstract:
We report on the femtosecond-laser micromachining of poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA) films doped with nonlinear azoaromatic chromophores: Disperse Red 1, Disperse Red 13 and Disperse Orange 3. We study the conditions for controlling chromophore degradation during the micromachining of PMMA doped with each chromophore. Furthermore, we successfully used fs-micromachining to fabricate optical waveguides within a bulk sample of PMMA doped with these azochromophores.
