Dental hard tissue drilling by longitudinally excited CO2 laser

We developed a longitudinally excited CO 2 laser with a long optical cavity and investigated the drilling characteristics of dental hard tissue. The CO 2 laser was very simple and consisted of a 45-cm-long alumina ceramic pipe with an inner diameter of 13 mm, a pulse power supply, a step-up transformer, a storage capacitance, a spark gap, and a long optical cavity with a cavity length of 175 cm. The CO 2 laser produced a short pulse that had a spike pulse with the width of 337 ns and the energy of 1.9 mJ, a pulse tail with the length of 180 μs and the energy of 37.6 mJ, and a doughnut-like beam. In the investigation, a sample was a natural drying human tooth (enamel and dentine). In a processing system, a ZnSe focusing lens with the focal length of 50 mm was used and the location of the focal plane was that of the sample surface. In 1 pulse irradiation, the drilling characteristics depended on the fluence was investigated. In the enamel and dentin drilling, the drilling depth increased with the fluence. The 1 pulse irradiation with the fluence of 21.5 J/cm 2 produced the depth of 79.3 μm in the enamel drilling, and the depth of 152.7 μm in the dentin drilling. The short-pulse CO 2 laser produced a deeper drilling depth at a lower fluence than long-pulse CO 2 lasers in dental hard tissue processing.