Quantifying the uncertainty of picosecond pulsed laser ablation in sapphire

One of the most prevalent materials used in sensor technologies is silicon which suffers degradation in operating regimes that exceed 1000 °C unless the sensor is actively cooled. Substitution of silicon with sapphire in pressure sensors offers unique capabilities due to its high melting point and chemical inertness; however, these same properties present manufacturing challenges for micromachining sensor components. To overcome the manufacturing challenges, research has focused on picosecond laser machining. A series of picosecond pulsed laser experiments have been conducted and compared to both one-dimensional and three-dimensional modeling of the ablation process. Bayesian uncertainty analysis is used to quantify the parametric uncertainty and error propagation from continuum scale constitutive approximations that can be directly compared with laser ablation experiments. The one dimensional model calibration is found to provide accurate estimations of picosecond laser ablation of sapphire and it enables extrapolation to predict three dimensional ablation.