Lasers have been used as a wide variety of tools since inception, which has enhanced our lives in numerous ways. The microelectronics, aerospace, medical, solar cell, transducer sensor, display manufacturers, and other fields are the ways lasers are used.
Lasers offer precision that was previously inaccessible, even from the most skilled experts. The relentless pace of progress in high-tech industries has resulted in ultrafast picosecond lasers, which have become valuable tools for, particularly high-precision applications.
This is because of the unique operating procedure of this form of laser, which allows patterning and clean cutting of sensitive materials and thin films used in many devices and micromachining of delicate materials such as glass. This replaces conventional cutting and drilling methods in many applications, reducing the use of other elements.
Micromachining silicon solar cells
Solar cell producers are working to achieve grid power cost parity in two ways that reduce the cost of cells and improve the efficiency of cell light conversions.Most solar cells are currently based on silicon wafers, and one way to improve the performance of these crystalline silicon solar cells is to use a backside passivation layer to reduce recombination losses. Holes must be drilled via the passivation layer to allow electrical contacts to the cell. To maximize the cell output and ensure good ohmic contact for current collection, this must be achieved with minimal damage to the underlying crystalline silicon.
For this mission, picosecond laser micromachining offers a low cost, 'direct-write' alternative to photolithography. Picosecond lasers reduce the use of bulk chemical products. In particular, studies have found that pulses of 355 nm picosecond deliver selective removal of the dielectric layers with minimum to no impact to the underlying silicon, allowing the formation of high-efficiency solar cells based on selective emitters.
At Laserod Technologies, we specialize in high resolution, small spot size laser machining, and silicon wafer resizing for semiconductor, medical, solar, and microelectronics applications, as well as patterning for the display industry.
Laserod is a pioneer in maskless fast prototyping of laser patterns on a wide variety of substrates, especially touch panels, using a direct-write, environmentally friendly high isolation process. If you have a project or questions to see if Laserod can help contact one of our experts at 310-340-1343/ 888-991-9916.
Tungsten carbide (WC) is very well recognized as a hard-to-machine material but is commonly used as a tool material.
Tungsten carbide is used in the industry due to its unique properties such as dimensional stability, extreme hardness, excellent wear resistance, and chemical inertness.Due to material durability and strength, traditional mechanical machining techniques, such as electrical discharge machining (EDM) and grinding, can experience problems such as tool damage, fast tool breakage, and time-consuming repairs.
If EDM is used in processing WC, there would be many machining problems, including a heat-affected layer formed on machined surfaces and a discharge-induced rough surface.As a consequence, a post-polishing process is necessary, which makes the whole manufacturing process very sluggish and raises the cost of production.
Besides, for the EDM operation, a shaped electrode must be produced, which usually wears and must be remodeled or replaced to ensure the necessary consistency of the component.An alternative, cost-effective, and high-efficiency machining system is required.
Laser micromachining is a promising choice due to its unique properties such as non-contact operation, no mechanical cutting forces, and no machine tool wear.
Nevertheless, the use of modern lasers, such as the nanosecond pulsed laser, to process tungsten carbide has been shown to cause thermal and residual material repositioning problems.Researchers have developed an effective picosecond pulsed-laser WC micromachining method.
