Ceramic Scribing Using Talon® Pulsed UV and Green Lasers
Ceramic materials are used extensively in the microelectronics, semiconductor, and LED lighting industries because of their electrically insulating and thermally conductive properties, as well as for their hightemperature-service capabilities. Their brittleness makes laser processing attractive when compared with conventional machining, particularly for producing the increasingly small and intricate features required for advanced microelectronics packaging. Scribing is one of the commonly performed ceramic machining operations. In this Application Focus, we consider two cases of laser scribing using Spectra-Physics’ Talon® family of pulsed nanosecond ultraviolet (UV) and green lasers: (1) shallow scribing (for scribe-andbreak process) and (2) deep scribing (for full-cut process). We studied both processes in two widely used ceramic materials: alumina and aluminum nitride. For high processing speeds, we tested high power green and UV Talon product offerings: the green (40 W) model Talon 532-40 and the UV (30 W) model Talon 355-30.
