Advances in CO2-Laser Drilling of Glass Substrates

The CO2 -laser drilling in Schott D263Teco thin glass having a thickness of 500 μm is intensively studied. The nearly cylindrical holes having diameters smaller 100 μm could be drilled in 0.25 seconds per hole. Reliability investigations by performing temperature cycling show cracks in 51% of the drilled holes in the glass substrate. The reason is thermally induced stress during thermal CO2 -laser ablation. Different thermal pre- and post-treatments have been successfully studied avoiding such cracks (98.4% crack-free holes) and show the high potential of CO2 -laser drilling for through glass via (TGV) processing in glass substrates for micro-system applications.