Micro- and nanostructures inside sapphire by fs-laser irradiation and selective etching

The fabrication of microchannels and self-assembled nanostructures in the volume of sapphire was performed by femtosecond laser irradiation followed by chemical etching with aqueous solution of HF acid. Depending on the focusing conditions self-organized nanostructures or elliptical microchannels are produced. While the dimensions in two directions are on a micro-respectively nanoscale, feature lengths of up to 1 mm are achieved. This comes out to aspect ratios of more than 1000. This fabrication technique is potentially usable for photonic crystal based integrated optical elements or microfluidic devices for applications in life science, biology or chemistry. (c) 2008 Optical Society of America.