In this paper, a series of experiments of drilling holes and slotting micro-channels on the 1 mm-thick BK7 or 1.1 mmthick B270 glass substrates are introduced by employing three types of Q-switched lasers with the wavelength of 1064, 355, and 266 nm. Firstly, by smearing the solution of NiSO4∙6H2O on the front surface of BK7 glass plates, we successfully realized drilling holes on the glass substrates by employing a 1064 nm fundamental Nd:YAG laser. Then, we also carried out the experiments of drilling holes by utilizing a normal third-harmonic-generation (THG) 355 nm Nd:YAG laser and a 266 nm FHG (forth-harmonic-generation) laser. It can be found that the diameters of drilled holes by utilizing a 355 nm laser are larger than those by utilizing a 266 nm laser, and the holes with both two wavelengths lasers did not change a lot when the exposure time of lasers was increased from 0.5 s to 30 s. Finally, the experiments of slotting micro-channels on B270 glass plates were undertaken by utilizing both a 355 nm laser and a 266 nm laser. It has been found that the cracks around slotted micro-channels become lesser when the moving speeds are increased for both experiments. The channel widths of using the 355 nm laser are around 10 times smaller than those of using the 266 nm laser. As a conclusion, among three kinds of lasers, the 355 nm laser may be the most suitable type for the glass micro-processing with high precision in practice.
Laser processing plays a key role in the industrial manufacture. The transparent material processing with a visible nanosecond laser based on a tripartite-interaction procedure has proven to be an effective method, which has the advantages of low cost, high efficiency, and simplicity over the traditional direct processing by using a femtosecond laser. In our pre-study, by using an assisted metal foil attached to the rear surface of a transparent glass sheet, some holes can be drilled on the glass sheet with a visible nanosecond laser. Such a physical mechanism is based on the heat conduction, generation of stress and ablation among the laser beam, the glass sheet and the metal foil. However, the processing quality of the glass sheet during the previous process is still dissatisfied and remains to be improved. In this study, we demonstrated a new tripartite-interaction procedure among the laser beam, glass sheet and copper foil, i.e. attaching an assisted copper foil on the front surface of the glass sheet, to further improve the processing quality of the hybrid tripartite-interaction processing. The experimental results are compared with those of our previous work, indicating that drilled holes and grooves with less crack and better quality can be obtained by using the new procedure. Moreover, to analyze the reasons of obtaining less cracks and better quality, we have carried out a series of theoretical studies on simulating such a new tripartite-interaction process. According to some specific simulation results of the temperature and density variations in the glass and copper, we can analyze that the reduction of thermal damage on the glass sheet and the improvement on processing quality might be attributed to the thermal transfer induced by attenuated laser energy in such a configuration. Our results could be useful for the development of visible nanosecond laser processing in industrial applications.
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