Theoretical and experimental analysis of the impact on ablation depth of microchannel milling using femtosecond laser

The plasma brightness cannot be used as a direct indicator of ablation depth detection by femtosecond laser was experimentally demonstrated, which led to the difficulty of depth measurement in the maching process. The tests of microchannel milling on the silicon wafer were carried out in the micromachining center in order to obtain the influences of parameters on the ablation depth. The test results showed that the defocusing distance had no significant impact on ablation depth in LAV effective range. Meanwhile, the reason of this was explained in this paper based on the theoretical analysis and simulation calculation. Then it was proven that the ablation depth mainly depends on laser fluence, step distance and scanning velocity. Finally, a research was further carried out to study the laser parameters which relate with the microchannel ablation depth inside the quartz glass for more efficiency and less cost in processing by femtosecond laser.