Dual-focus laser micro-machining

This paper describes an optical configuration for generating dual-focus from a single laser incident beam. The generated two foci have nearly equivalent spot size and both fall on the optical axis of the focusing optics, but at different focal lengths. The dual-focus optics allows for variations of the laser power of each focal point and the distance between the two focal points. The advantages of dual-focus ablation were demonstrated with a nanosecond UV laser dicing silicon substrates. The experimental results show that, compared to conventional single focus, dual-focus improves ablation rate by a factor of 2-4.