The requirements on the resolution of direct laser structuring are constantly growing and are now firmly in the sub-μm range. However, strong focusing of a Gaussian beam near diffraction limit is accompanied by a very limited depth of focus, which leads to an extreme increase in process sensitivity. To overcome the problem of the short focal tolerance, nondiffracting Bessel beams can be applied providing a depth of field in the mm range while allowing the diameter of the central processing spot to be 1 μm. Features in this size range are needed, for instance, for printed electronics such as highresolution displays. Since the reduction of the focus diameter is coupled with a decrease in productivity, the process must be parallelized to set the foundation for the industrial exploitation of Bessel beam technology for the manufacture of embossing and printing tools. This contribution presents the optical setup of a laser structuring machine that works with four parallel Bessel beams. Each beamlet can be modulated individually to enable the flexible generation of arbitrary surface structures. Ablation results with structure sizes of 1 μm are presented. A strategy to estimate the position-dependent peak fluence has been developed based on CMOS images of the Bessel beam along the propagation. This knowledge about the fluence is particularly relevant to prevent ablation by side lobes and to transfer the experience from ultrafast laser ablation with conventional Gaussian beams to the Bessel beam processing. Furthermore, this paper presents a novel approach to lateral Bessel beam scanning for efficient machining of cylinders based on RF shifting in AOMs or AODs.
Functionalization of surfaces equips products and components with new features like hydrophilic behavior, adjustable gloss level, light management properties, etc. Small feature sizes demand diffraction-limited spots and adapted fluence for different materials. Through the availability of high power fast repeating ultrashort pulsed lasers and efficient optical processing heads delivering diffraction-limited small spot size of around 10μm it is feasible to achieve fluences higher than an adequate patterning requires. Hence, parallel processing is becoming of interest to increase the throughput and allow mass production of micro machined surfaces.
The first step on the roadmap of parallel processing for cylinder embossing dies was realized with an eight- spot processing head based on ns-fiber laser with passive optical beam splitting, individual spot switching by acousto optical modulation and an advanced imaging. Patterning of cylindrical embossing dies shows a high efficiency of nearby 80%, diffraction-limited and equally spaced spots with pitches down to 25μm achieved by a compression using cascaded prism arrays. Due to the nanoseconds laser pulses the ablation shows the typical surrounding material deposition of a hot process.
In the next step the processing head was adapted to a picosecond-laser source and the 500W fiber laser was replaced by an ultrashort pulsed laser with 300W, 12ps and a repetition frequency of up to 6MHz. This paper presents details about the processing head design and the analysis of ablation rates and patterns on steel, copper and brass dies. Furthermore, it gives an outlook on scaling the parallel processing head from eight to 16 individually switched beamlets to increase processing throughput and optimized utilization of the available ultrashort pulsed laser energy.
Despite of today’s availability of high power USP lasers up to several hundred Watts, it is still a challenge to structure large surface areas as required on printing and embossing rollers within an acceptable processing time for industrial production. This paper shows and compares the results of two different approaches, the parallel treatment of the workpiece with multiple beam arrangements (each beam individually modulated at repetition rates of up to 2 MHz) and a second approach based on high pulse repetition rates from 6 MHz to 16 MHz combined with fast beam scanning techniques with a polygon scanner up to 100 m/s.
In the last decade much improvement has been achieved for ultra-short pulse lasers with high repetition rates. This laser technology has vastly matured so that it entered a manifold of industrial applications recently compared to mainly scientific use in the past. Compared to ns-pulse ablation ultra-short pulses in the ps- or even fs regime lead to still colder ablation and further reduced heat-affected zones. This is crucial for micro patterning when structure sizes are getting smaller and requirements are getting stronger at the same time. An additional advantage of ultra-fast processing is its applicability to a large variety of materials, e.g. metals and several high bandgap materials like glass and ceramics.
One challenge for ultra-fast micro machining is throughput. The operational capacity of these processes can be maximized by increasing the scan rate or the number of beams – parallel processing. This contribution focuses on process parallelism of ultra-short pulsed lasers with high repetition rate and individually addressable acousto-optical beam modulation. The core of the multi-beam generation is a smooth diffractive beam splitter component with high uniform spots and negligible loss, and a prismatic array compressor to match beam size and pitch. The optical design and the practical realization of an 8 beam processing head in combination with a high average power single mode ultra-short pulsed laser source are presented as well as the currently on-going and promising laboratory research and micro machining results. Finally, an outlook of scaling the processing head to several tens of beams is given.
With roll-to-roll processes, millions of reproductions (e.g. RFID-antennas or Fresnel-lenses) can be produced in a fast and economical way. The processing of replica tools for such printing and embossing applications requires in many cases sub-μm and μm-structures. Ultra-short pulse lasers with ps- and fs-pulse durations and in single pulse or burst mode operation are appropriate tools to generate this micro- or nanostructures. In recent years the ongoing development of these laser sources and of fast beam delivery optics allows higher ablation rates combined with a superior quality for several materials like copper and brass as well as glass and dielectrics.
Different ps-laser systems at 10 ps with up to 80 W at 1064 nm with a pulse repetition rate up to 8 MHz and energies up to 50 μJ (at lower repetition rate) have been used in a micro-engraving system for large cylindrical workpieces. This setup allows the micro structuring of cylinder surfaces as well as the processing of thin film substrate sheets up to a thickness of approximately 300 μm. Dimensions up to 7 m face length and circumferences up to 1,3 m can be processed with an accuracy of about 1μm. A variety of metals have been investigated by structuring 2D and 3D elements. The process is nearly melt-free, but the resulting surface structure of the ablated zone depends on the sort of metal. The high fluencies also enable the engraving of transparent materials which allow a much faster micro processing speed compared to metals. This work shows examples of micro-structuring melamine-resin coated cylinder surfaces and hybrid materials.
Laser processing is generally known for low thermal influence, precise energy processing and the
possibility to ablate every type of material independent on hardness and vaporisation
temperature. The use of ultra-short pulsed lasers offers new possibilities in the manufacturing of
high end products with extra high processing qualities. For achieving a sufficient and economical
processing speed, high average power is needed. To scale the power for industrial uses the
picosecond laser system has been developed, which consists of a seeder, a preamplifier and an
end amplifier. With the oscillator/amplifier system more than 400W average power and maximum
pulse energy 1mJ was obtained. For study of high speed processing of large embossing metal
roller two different ps laser systems have been integrated into a cylinder engraving machine. One
of the ps lasers has an average power of 80W while the other has 300W. With this high power ps
laser fluencies of up to 30 J/cm2 at pulse repetition rates in the multi MHz range have been
achieved. Different materials (Cu, Ni, Al, steel) have been explored for parameters like ablation
rate per pulse, ablation geometry, surface roughness, influence of pulse overlap and number of
loops. An enhanced ablation quality and an effective ablation rate of 4mm3/min have been
achieved by using different scanning systems and an optimized processing strategy. The max.
achieved volume rate is 20mm3/min.
Application of lasers for print form fabrication plays an increasingly important role in the printing industry due to the
high machining rate, the high spatial resolution and the ability of digital modulation. This paper gives an overview of our
laser based processes in gravure and embossing with a focus on micro-structuring of gravure print forms by direct laser
ablation. The precise large scale micro-fabrication by laser engraving is the fastest and most versatile process for gravure
cylinder fabrication (ablation rate up to 1 cm3/min). Direct laser engraving into metallic cylinders is performed with high
power Q-switched Nd:YAG laser systems and fiber lasers at up to 100 kHz repetition rate, tuned for high reproducibility
and stability of the mean pulse energy (σ2 < 0.6%). Flexible aspect ratios and designs of the cell profile are achieved by
fast modulation of the laser beam profile for each single pulse. This allows for optimization of the cell shape to get the
best ink transfer interaction on a specific print substrate. New experiments with high power fiber lasers (cw lasers and
pulsed MOPA systems > 500W@ 100kHz) resulted in improved cell precision, screen resolution and production
efficiency. Future large scale cylinder engraving with ultra short pulse lasers (ps) is discussed.
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