Percussion drilling in glasses and process dynamics with femtosecond laser GHz-bursts
John Lopez, Samba Niane, Guillaume Bonamis, Pierre Balage, E. Audouard, Clemens Hönninger, Eric Mottay, Inka Manek‐Hönninger
Abstract
We report for the first time to our knowledge on top-down percussion drilling of high-quality deep holes in different glasses with femtosecond laser pulses in GHz-burst mode. We reveal the dynamics of the percussion drilling process by pump-probe shadowgraphy and thermal camera imaging demonstrating that the drilling process in GHz-burst mode is fundamentally different from single-pulse processing and confirming the presence of thermal accumulation. Moreover, we show a comparison to drilling by femtosecond single-pulses containing an equal laser fluence in sodalime, alkali-free alumina-borosilicate, fused silica, and sapphire.