Ablation enhancement by femtosecond laser irradiation assisted with a microtorch for microgrooves fabrication in PMMA

This study proposes an ablation enhancement approach to fabricate microgrooves in PMMA by femtosecond laser irradiation assisted with a microtorch. The influences of pulse energy and scanning speed on the groove depth and removal area of groove are investigated. It is demonstrated that the improvement of groove depth has a close relationship with the scanning speed. When the scanning speed was less than 50 µm/s, the ablated groove depth is considerably improved with various pulse energies, up to 100 %. Moreover, the removal area of groove has significant enhancements of up to 250 % in various processing parameters. It is suggested that the ablation enhancement of microgrooves fabrication is related to the status of plasma plume and substrate heating. With the assistance of the microtorch, laser-induced plasma plume is confined and its density at center region is raised, which results in the increment of the central plasma’s temperature and more energy deposited on the PMMA surface, ultimately leading to the ablation enhancement. Meanwhile, the instantaneous substrate heating also plays a crucial role on enhanced microgrooves fabrication.