Udo Löschner

Drilling of glass by excimer laser mask projection technique

Presently, there is a growing demand from the industry for microprocessing of materials. In particular, for applications in the field of microsystems technology it is necessary to produce structures with dimensions down to the micrometer scale especially in materials that could not be processed or processed well by conventional microelectronic technologies. We have been investigating the drilling of anodically bondable Pyrex glass by means of laser microprocessing using the excimer laser mask projection technique (248 or 193 nm wavelength, 10 ns pulse duration, 8 mJ pulse energy, 500 Hz repetition rate). We will show the dependence of the processing results on the laser parameters. The diameter of the holes ranges from 30 to 100 μm at the front side and from 1 to 50 μm at the rear side of the 500-μm-thick wafer. We observed the formation of cracks in the laser processed region. Accordingly, we found distinct relationships between the process parameters and the quality of the walls of the drilled holes. Es...

Contactless laser bending of silicon microstructures

We are going to present a new technology for laser bending of silicon microstructures based upon a suggestion of and carried out in cooperation with Prof. Dr. J. Frühauf from the Technical University Chemnitz (see acknowledgement). We investigated the influence of various laser process parameters on the bending angle and its reproducibility. Bending of the silicon element as a result of the laser induced thermal stresses in the material occurs toward the incident laser beam. The bending angle depends on a lot of laser process and material parameters. In particular we found that the irra-diation regime is well suited to control the bending angle. First substantial FEM based calculations of laser induced temperature fields using a moving laser heat source show the temperature field propagation in the material and reveal some regions of complicated overheating. As a result of our experiments we show a variety of examples including mul-tiple and also continuous bendings. There are several essential advantages compared to conventional bending technologies with this new method: Laser bending is contactless without using additional tools or external forces. Because of the local laser treatment the heat flux to the neighbouring material is minimized. The laser beam can be applied through windows of glass that means to al-most hermetically sealed micro devices. So laser technology is suitable for machining of already finished microsystems. It opens up a wide field of applications in micro system technologies: clip-chip-mechanism or sliding chips for micro optical benches, the adjustment of optical mirrors or other components or the ability of continuous bending for electro-static drives and so on.

Selective realignment of the exchange biased magnetization direction in spintronic layer stacks using continuous and pulsed laser radiation

We report on selective realignment of the magnetization direction of the exchange biased ferromagnetic layer in two different spintronic layer stacks using laser radiation. The exchange bias effect occurs in an antiferromagnetic/ferromagnetic bilayer system when cooled in an external magnetic field below the Néel temperature and results in a shift of the ferromagnetic hysteresis loop with increased coercivity. The effect is utilized to pin the magnetization direction of the reference ferromagnetic layer in spin valve systems. We investigated the realignment of the pinned magnetization direction in a spin valve system with in plane exchange bias and in a Co/Pt multilayer with perpendicular exchange bias. The layer stacks were heated above the Néel temperature in a defined lateral area by using rapidly deflected laser radiation. Two different laser assisted annealing techniques were investigated applying either continuous or pulsed laser radiation. During laser annealing, the sample was subjected to an external magnetic field in order to selectively realign the magnetization direction of the pinned ferromagnetic layer. Magnetic structuring was performed by heating narrow single tracks as well as irradiating single pulses. By using a magneto optical sensor in combination with a polarization microscope, the magnetic structures have been visualized. After laser annealing of larger-scaled areas, the exchange bias field strength and the coercive field strength were analyzed using a magneto optical Kerr effect set up (MOKE). The impact of the processing parameters laser peak intensity, laser pulse duration, scan speed (continuous wave) and magnetic field strength on the resulting reversed exchange bias field was evaluated.