Laser cleaving on glass sheets with multiple laser beams

A multiple laser system consisting of CO2 line-shaped and Nd-YAG pulsed lasers was applied to cleave a soda-lime glass substrate in this study. Due to an increase of absorption coefficient of the wavelength of 1.06 mu m for Nd-YAG laser on the soda-lime glass at high temperatures, the glass sheets were preheated by the CO2 line-shaped laser and followed with the pulsed Nd-YAG laser to generate a mixture fracture mode on the substrate. The stress distribution on the glass substrate cleaved by the multiple laser beams has been analyzed. An uncoupled thermal-elastic analysis based on the finite-element method (FEM) was made. The numerical results show that the stress field of the fracture region is caused by a complex stress state and the cleavages are significantly affected by the pulsed laser. A clean cut of the soda-lime glass substrate could be obtained due to a large shear stress state on the cutting direction with the pulsed laser radiated on the glass substrate. (C) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.