Stripping the outside polymer layers of fiber optics or medical microwires without affecting their mechanical or conductive properties has been challenging for a long time. Femtum selective laser stripping process outperforms mechanical, chemical and standard laser stripping processes in terms of stripping quality, yield and throughput.
Figure: SMF fiber stripping with high tensile strength in average.
Transparent conducting films like ITO, PEDOT:PSS or graphene oxide (GO) are widely used in modern electronic devices. Femtum fiber laser enable selective patterning of these thins films on various substrates (glass, polymers, semiconductors). Thanks to its mid-IR wavelength, transparent conductive films can be ablated above (front processing) and even through different substrates (back processing) at high processing speed.
Figure: Front and back ITO patterning on a PET film.
The electronic industry requires semiconductor materials like silicon or germanium to be precisely cut or scribed. However, standard lasers in the UV or near-infrared are directly absorbed at the surface. Femtum lasers are transparent to semiconductor material, but they can precisely ablate these materials through multiphoton absorption, giving the flexibility to process semiconductors in volume.
Figure: Hole drilling in germanium.
A repeatable manufacturing process of on-surface waveguide inscription at scale has been demonstrated with Femtum lasers. Polymers are cheap, bio-compatible materials and now there is a method to turn almost any plastic into a high-tech sensing device by directly writing waveguides at their surfaces. This process requires a match between a laser wavelength and a material’s absorption band in order to change the refractive index at the surface of the material, without causing additional deformation or burning of the matrix.
Figure: On-surface waveguides in PMMA.
Surface functionalization of polymers allows to modify their mechanical, thermal, optical and adhesion properties as well as their wettability (hydrophilic vs hydrophobic) or biocompatibility. Smooth surface modification at very high speeds can be obtained with Femtum lasers.
Figure: Surface texturing of polycarbonate and micro-lens fabrication in acrylate.
