Laser cutting of silicon with the liquid jet guided laser using a chlorine-containing jet media

In this paper results for liquid media are presented, which are used the first time as liquid jet for cutting of silicon with laser chemical processing (LCP). The liquids contain a perfluoro-carbon compound as solvent and elemental chlorine as etching agent for silicon. Experiments were performed to investigate its influence on groove form and maximum achieved groove depth. It is shown that with the addition of low-concentration chlorine, the groove depth can already be significantly increased. The groove shape could be changed from a V-profile to a U-profile. Furthermore, an about four times greater groove depth was achieved by applying a saturated chlorine solution compared to groove depths without using chlorine. Finally, a theory is given and discussed to describe the phenomena observed.