LASER DRILLING
Our solutions enable drilling of via holes and internal contours in glass components by filamentation or ablation. Depending on the required productivity, edge quality and the aspect ratio, perfect cutouts in almost any shape can be produced by combining processes. From cable feedthroughs in the cover glass of a PV module to microvias in glasses for microelectronics.
CREATING THE PERFECT HOLE
Laser glass drilling is a dry and contactless process introducing through holes or cut-outs into glass sheets with very low glass chipping and hence high edge strength as well as extremely high precision - in terms shape and positioning accuracy.
Laser glass drilling is based on laser ablation using green laser light (532 nm). Usually, glass absorbs light in the far IR and UV wavelength region and is highly transparent in the visible wavelength range. Therefore, it seems surprising that green laser light can be used to process glass when only a very small fraction of the laser light can be transformed into heat. Glass is a so called wide-bandgap material where the photon energy of normal solid-state lasers at 532 nm is not high enough for a direct single-photon bandgap excitation of the material.
However, if a laser beam is strongly focused into the glass material and at the same time the laser pulse emission is very short, a high intensity energy distribution is achieved that exceeds the so called threshold intensity at which the material absorbs the green laser light. This effect is called non-linear absorption and effectively enables laser glass drilling with green laser light.
