Effect of Excimer Laser Parameters on the Ablation Depth During Micromachining of Polycarbonate

Polycarbonate (PC) material widely used in micro pumps & micro valves. In machining of PC using Excimer laser ablation rate is one of the important factors in achieving desired features. In the present work, micromachining of Polycarbonate (PC) was carried out using KrF excimer laser of 248 nm wavelength. A micro- hole of Ø150μm was machined on PC substrate during the experimentation. The PC substrates were exposed to a different number of pulses (1-100) at repetition rates of 2-10 Hz respectively by keeping the pulse energy unchanged at 100mJ. The effect of pulse repetition rate and a number of pulses on ablation depth has been investigated in the current work.