Processing of Transparent and Dielectric Materials with Deep UV-and VUV Excimer Laser Radiation

In this paper, technologies will be presented for precise machining of transparent and dielectric materials with excimer laser radiation. This includes already established techniques with 248 nm KrF excimer lasers, as well as the less common deep UV 193 nm processing with ArF lasers for brittle and transparent materials. Furthermore, first investigations have been carried out in order to shape materials with a high transparency in the UV, like fused silica or polytetrafluorine (PTFE) by using the VUV wavelength 157 nm of an F2 excimer laser.