Ultra-fast laser allows nanoscale machining
USING A femtosecond pulsed laser enables extraordinarily precise nanomachining. Just think of a microscopic milling machine, capable of cutting just about any material with better-than-laser precision, in three dimensional and at the nanometre scale.
In a paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, University of Michigan researchers explain the capabilities of the ultra-fast or ultra-short pulsed laser and significant implications for basic scientific research, and for practical applications in the nanotechnology industry.
Initially, the researchers working at the Center for Ultrafast Optical Science wanted to use the ultra-fast laser as a powerful tool to study the structures within living cells, said Alan Hunt, an assistant professor, at the Department of Biomedical Engineering.
``It turned out we could push much farther than expected and the applications became broad, from microelectronics applications to MEMS (microelectromechanical systems) to microfluidics,'' Hunt said.
Finding an efficient and precise way to build and machine the tiny devices is one of the most perplexing problems in nanotechnology. For example, a human hair is about 100,000 nanometres across.
It is made possible to selectively ablate or cut away features as small as 20 nanometres by the unique physics of an ultra-short pulsed laser used at a very high intensity, Hunt said.
Because of the unique physics of how extremely short pulses of light interact with matter; specifically using femtosecond pulses, a blast of light just about a quadrillionth of a second long, this is possible.
- Our Bureau
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