Product Code: PIC06_M101

Fabrication of Microchannels in PMMA by Femtosecond Laser Pulses (Invited Paper)
Authors:
Daniel Day, Centre for Micro-Photonics; Victoria Australia
Min Gu, Centre for Micro-Photonics; Hawthorn VIC Australia
Presented at PICALO 2006

Microchannels are fabricated in a poly(methyl methacrylate) substrate by high repetition rate, nanojoule femtosecond laser pulses. Microchannels with diameters of 8 - 15 m can be fabricated at a wavelength of 750 nm and a fabrication speed of 800 m/s using 80 fs pulses at a repetition rate of 80 MHz with energy of 0.9 nJ/pulse. The size and shape of the microchannels can be controlled by changing the fabrication parameters of speed, the number of fabrication repeats and the delay in-between fabrication repeats. It has been proposed that the diffusion of heat from the focal region to the polymer matrix due to the high repetition rate and repeated fabrication scans results in the formation of the microchannels. Diffusion of heat through the substrate is a uniform process which has the effect of creating symmetrically shaped channels. This fabrication method is expected to have applications in the fabrication of microstructures or microfluidic devices in polymer substrates.