Cost effective micromanufacturing with low power lasers: a review

Abstract

Laser micromanufacturing is an emerging technique that holds significant implications in a variety of sectors, including biomedical engineering, additive manufacturing, sensors, industrial manufacturing, and microfabrication technologies. The key advantage is the precision as well as efficiency it provides when creating micro and nanostructures, which are becoming more and more important for modern-day applications. As laser microfabrication enables maskless processing, it lowers setup times and costs. It offers an easier alternative to fabricate complicated geometries and conduct rapid prototyping compared to conventional photolithography techniques. Several research works have been reported in this field in the last two decades. However, a major limitation of many of these research works is the fact that they use expensive laser sources such as ultrafast femtosecond lasers. Though femtosecond lasers provide several advantages, it is often not a cost effective method for micromanufacturing. In contrast, low power laser micromanufacturing platforms offer several economic advantages from an industrial point of view such as minimized capital investment, low maintenance costs, and sustainable production due to reduced energy consumption. In this review, we specifically examine cost effective, low power laser micromanufacturing techniques, recent advancements in this field, and future perspectives.