Efficient Yet Accessible Arduino-based Control System for Laser Microfabrication of Photonic Platforms

Laser Microfabrication (LMF) has been widely employed in a broad range of applications based on linear and nonlinear optics phenomena. Thus, this work aims to develop an Arduino-controlled low-cost LMF setup with high quality and precision. The LMF setup comprises a homemade optical microscope, a motorized 3-D translation stage based on low-cost stepper motors and current driver, and a relay module to control the hard disk shutter switch. We show that the microfabrication setup is capable of a precise XY translation motion with 25 mm travel range and scanning speeds as high as 1350 μm/s, with a resolution of 315 nm while presenting high precision and repeatability (tiny backlash < 0.5 μm). In order to test the experimental setup, we measured the influence of the laser pulses number and power on the microstructure profile in azochromophores-based electro-optical films and revealed the versatility of the LMF system to microfabricate plasmonic structures.