Efficient ablation by ultra-short pulse lasers

Abstract Ultra-short pulse lasers have already proven to be an excellent tool for material processing due to confined laser-matter interaction leading to high quality, precision and thermal-damage-free surface structuring. For the technology to be a cost-efficient and suitable for the industry, continuous research on the ways how to improve the throughput, in terms of energy and time efficiencies must be done. In this work, the ultra-short pulse lasers were used to investigate the ablation efficiency of a copper target. Laser ablation efficiency was investigated by pulse energy and beam size optimisation method for various processing parameters. Also, the efficiency of material removal by bursts of ultra-short pulses was investigated. Furthermore, it was shown that high ablation efficiency led to superior ablation quality in terms of surface roughness, which both are the most critical characteristics for industry-orientated applications.