Micro-ablation with high power pulsed copper vapor lasers

Visible and UV lasers with nanosecond pulse durations, diffraction-limited beam quality and high pulse repetition rates have demonstrated micro-ablation in a wide variety of materials with sub-micron precision and sub-micron-sized heat-affected zones. The copper vapour laser (CVL) is one of the important industrial lasers for micro-ablation applications. Manufacturing applications for the CVL include orifice drilling in fuel injection components and inkjet printers, micro-milling of micromoulds, via hole drilling in printed circuit boards and silicon machining. Recent advances in higher power (100W visible, 5W UV), diffraction-limited, compact CVLs are opening new possibilities for manufacturing with this class of nanosecond laser.