CO2 Laser Microchanneling Process: Effects of Compound Parameters and Pulse Overlapping

PMMA (Polymethyl methacrylate) is commonly used in many microfluidic devices like Lab-on-a-chip devices, bioanalytical devices etc. CO2 lasers provide easy and cost effective solution for micromachining needs on PMMA. Microchannels are an integral part of most of these microfluidic devices. CO2 laser beams have been successfully applied by many authors to fabricate microchannels on PMMA substrates. Laser beam power and scanning speed are the most important laser input parameters affecting the output parameters like microchannel depth, width and heat affected zone (HAZ). The effect of these individual parameters on output parameters are well known and already elaborated by many authors. However, these output parameters can more significantly be described by some compound parameters (combination of direct input laser parameters) like laser fluence, specific point energy, interaction time and P/U (power/scanning speed) ratio. The explanation of effect of these compound parameters was not found in earlier researches. In this work, several experiments were carried out to determine the effects of these compound parameters on output parameters i.e. microchannel width, depth and heat affected zone. The effect of pulse overlapping was also determined by performing experiments at different pulse overlaps and with two different energy deposition settings. The concept of actual pulse overlapping has been introduced by considering actual beam spot diameter instead of using theoretical beam diameter. Minimum pulse overlapping was determined experimentally in order to ensure smooth microchannel edges.