Effects of Top-hat Laser Beam Processing and Scanning Strategies in Laser Micro-Structuring.

The uniform energy distribution of top-hat laser beams is a very attractive property that can offer some advantages compared to Gaussian beams. Especially, the desired intensity distribution can be achieved at the laser spot through energy redistribution across the beam spatial profile and, thus, to minimize and even eliminate some inherent shortcomings in laser micro-processing. This paper reports an empirical study that investigates the effects of top-hat beam processing in micro-structuring and compares the results with those obtainable with a conventional Gaussian beam. In particular, a refractive field mapping beam shaper was used to obtain a top-hat profile and the effects of different scanning strategies, pulse energy settings, and accumulated fluence, i.e., hatch and pulse distances, were investigated. In general, the top-hat laser processing led to improvements in surface and structuring quality. Especially, the taper angle was reduced while the surface roughness and edge definition were also improved compared to structures produced with Gaussian beams. A further decrease of the taper angle was achieved by combining hatching with some outlining beam passes. The scanning strategies with only outlining beam passes led to very high ablation rates but in expense of structuring quality. Improvements in surface roughness were obtained with a wide range of pulse energies and pulse and hatch distances when top-hat laser processing was used.

Analysis of the imaging method for assessment of the smile of laser diode bars.

We study imaging systems designed to assess the smile of laser diode bars (LDBs). The magnification matrix is derived from the required sampling period and the geometries of the LDBs and the charge-coupled device (CCD) array. These image-forming systems present in-plane pure translation invariance, but in the case of anamorphic ones, lack in-plane rotation invariance. It is shown that the smile parameters of the image of the LDB are linked with the smile parameters of the LDB by simple mathematical expressions. The spatial resolution of such optical systems is estimated at approximately 1 microm for a mean wavelength of lambda approximately 800 nm. Our results suggest that, with the current state-of-the-art, the formation of imaging methods for LDB smile assessment can be used to assess smile heights > or = 1 microm.