Pulsed laser micro-machining of polymer for micro-channel fabrication: Theory and experiment

This paper develops the modeling of pulsed laser micromachining of polymers having high absorption at the irradiation wavelength. For this purpose, CO2 laser micromachining of Poly-Ether-Sulfone (PES) polymer as a widely-used biocompatible material is investigated. The present study provides a comprehensive model for various types of nanosecond pulsed lasers. The proposed model uses the experimental parameters to predict the micro-channel physical characteristics including the channel depth, the width, and the profile. The laser fluence, the scanning speed of the mini-CNC router table, the pulse repetition frequency, the laser beam radius at the focal length, the pulse duration (FWHM), and the thermophysical properties of the PES polymer are the controlling input variables. For proposed model validation, the theoretical and the experimental results were evaluated and the acceptable average deviations of 8.1% was observed.