Ultrashort pulsed laser backside ablation of fused silica

We report on the fabrication of rectangular microchannels with vertical sidewalls in fused silica by laser backside ablation. A 515 nm femtosecond laser is focused by an objective with a NA of 0.5 through the sample on the glass/air interface, allowing processing from the backside into the bulk material. Experimental investigations reveal a logarithmically increasing depth of the channels with an increasing number of scans, while keeping the focal position fixed. A certain number of scans has to be applied to generate rectangular shaped channels while their depth can be controlled by the applied fluence from 2.64 µm to 13.46 µm and a corresponding ablation roughness R_a between 0.20 µm and 0.33 µm. The channel width can be set directly via the number of parallel ablated lines demonstrated in a range from 10 µm to 50 µm. By adjusting the focal position after each scan the channel depth can be extended to 49.77 µm while maintaining a rectangular channel geometry. Finally, concentric rings are ablated to demonstrate the flexibility of the direct writing process.