Low Divergence

LightMachinery resonator optics are available to provide low divergence for applications
requiring long distance propagation of the beam or the highest focussability. A significant
improvement to spatial coherence is also obtained, which is beneficial in some applications
involving the use of diffractive optics (e.g. FBG writing, DOE hole drilling).
The beam is flat topped in both axes, with
no occlusions, for divergence of <300
microradians
The LightMachinery staff have been world
leaders in excimer lasers for over 25 years
and we will continue to lead the way with
improvements and refinements to excimer
laser technology.

Low Divergence
Performance

Beam profile at the focal plane of a one meter

lens. Beam divergence is approximately 230
micro-radians FWHM in both axes.

Interference pattern generated from a pair of

slits seperated by 0.3mm demonstrating the
spatial coherence of the unstable resonator
configuration.

Fringe Visibility (FV)

FV = Peak Intensity - Base intensity
Peak Intensity + Base Intensity

Fringe visibility versus beam displacement

using a shearing interferometer.

10 mm x 24 mm beam size at FWHM.

Divergence less than 300 microradians.

70% of stable resonator power in near field.

Stable Reliable Performance

The LightMachinery PulseMaster and IPEX excimer

laser's Stabilase system monitors the laser output and
automatically adjusts the laser high voltage to maintain a
constant laser output.

One of the remarkable features of the LightMachinery

excimer laser design is the stability of the beam profile
over hundreds of millions of laser pulses. Even after 800
million pulses the beam profile FWHM will change less
than 5%.

LightMachinery excimer lasers are assembled in a clean

environment utilising materials selected for good
compatibility and long laser vessel lifetimes.

Stainless steel gate valves enable easy optic cleaning

without the significant loss of laser gas. Laser passivation
is maintained, maximizing gas lifetime.

Excimer Laser Applications

The staff at LightMachinery has been involved with excimer lasers since the beginning of time

LightMachinery Excimer Lasers are designed for a wide variety

of advanced applications in precision manufacturing and R&D
including;

Wire stripping

Drilling

Changing the index of optical materials to 'write' FiberBragg gratings or holograms

Micro-machining of polymer and ceramic materials for electronic and medical devices

Marking

Pulsed laser deposition (PLD) and chemical vapour deposition (CVD)

LIDAR

Lasers in Research - A sample of research paper involving our lasers

Wire Stripping
Excimer lasers enable clean non-contact stripping of a wide variety of wire and insulation types. The excimer laser is
a standard industrial tool wherever mechanically fragile wires are used. The excimer beam removes insulation without
any charring and creates a very clean metal surface.

Typical of excimer laser stripping of fine gauge wires for hard disk drives.
Very clean insulation removal, no loose particles and no damage to the
core conductor. This is a gold/copper 47 gage wire, 50 microns in diameter
with 8 microns of polyurethane insulation.

Heavier Gage wire stripping. 14 gage wire, 2mm in diameter, insulation 12

microns thick. Wire has been stripped only from one side a common
requirement that is easily accomplished with the excimer laser.

Wire stripping of multiple wires, 50um wire diameter, Polyimide insulation

Stripping a single 50um wire with polyimide insulation

Drilling
The drilling of small holes is one of the most common applications of the excimer laser. Ultra-violet light can be
focussed to very small spots, the very small holes in ink jet nozzles are almost exclusively drilled the excimer laser.
The clean walls created in the this fast 'cold' process have no melting or charring.

An excellent example of the quality and precision

achieved by the excimer laser drilling plastic. This is
75 micron thick polyimide with 50 micron diameter
holes.

Refractive Index Modification

The ability of the excimer laser to alter the index of doped glasses became an important industrial process in the
1990's when it became the standard process for creating Fiber Bragg Gratings. This continues to be a very common
use for the excimer laser and now new variations are also gaining industrial strength including the cration of micro
holographic optical elements.

Fiber Bragg Gratings (FBGs ) are narrowband reflection filters written

permanently into the core of single mode fibers. Wavelength-selective
fibers for telecommunications (DWDM) and smart sensors. Normally
done with a KrF or ArF excimer laser operating with unstable resonator
optics.

Unstable resonator optics available on GSI Lumonics excimer lasers

provide low beam divergence and excellent focused spot quality. This
is a very important parameter when the laser is used in advanced aThe
spot profile shown here is formed by a one meter focusing lens. Learn
more...

Example of microlens array, 90x50m lenslets in PC by Optec OG

technique.

Micro-Machining
The excimer laser is a powerful industrial tool for the micro-machining of non-metals. Masks of various shapes are
often put in the beam and demagnified onto the component. The shape of the mask may be a rectangle or a round
shape. Then X-Y tables can be used under CNC control to develop intricate shapes and contours.

Very precise stripping from gold contact pads using an IPEX laser with a
highly specialized Offner projection lens to pattern around a dozen
devices in one go, with step & repeat for rows of devices. Edges are
precise to <1.5m, and note lack of debris using Coax He nozzle.

Test pattern machined with IPEX in Polyimide, bar width is 20m, credit
Olaf Krger, FBH, Berlin

8m width and 8m pitch grooves in polycarbonate

Catheter slit is a 20 m wide groove machined though a conductive

coating along the length of a 1.8m catheter. There were 4 grooves milled
simultaneously and rigorously at 90 by splitting the IPEX beam in 4

Fibre location grooves machined in PMMA using a PM848 at 193nm.

Credit to Kris Naessens of INTEC for the photo

ZnSe lens array, pitch 6m, using MAS300 workstation with an IPEX
series eximcer laser. Credit to P Gailly, Centre Spatial de Lige, Belgium.

Spiral slots in a Polyimide tube(prototype polymer stent) around 0.8mm

dia.

Example of microlens array, 90x50m lenslets in PC by Optec OG

technique.

Marking
The UV energy from the excimer laser can produce dramatic color changes in plastics and ceramic materials. These
marks are permanent and can be used for simple identification or traceability or anti-conterfeit. Sample testing at
LightMachinery is free so do not hesitate to contact us to evaluate your marking application.

Ceramic chip capacitor marking, very small character sizes, high

throughput, good contrast on most ceramics. Excimer marking is
normally integrated into an automated test handler.

Aerospace wire marking for Tefzel and Teflon wire. The excimer laser
marks are high contrast permanent marks that cannot be removed with
solvents. No reduction in insulation strength.

Applications include marking on contact lenses, flat panel displays. Mark

shown here is typical of 2D matrix codes used on flat panel displays and
other high value glass substrates. Glass marks are achieved using the
excimer laser at 193nm. Dot size is 100 microns

Pulsed Laser Deposition

The excimer laser can be used as a means of vaporizing target material inside a vacuum chamber and depositing it
on a substrate. The process has several advantages over conventional processes including;
- A wide variety of targets can be used; metals, ceramics and oxydes
- Independant control on the deposition temperature and the background pressure (oxygen, helium, nitrogen...).
- the resulting thin film has the same stochiometry as the target
- novel coatings such as diamond films can be produced
See our IPEX PLD Series Brochure for more information on the LightMachinery IPEX PLD Series Lasers

The PulseMaster laser in a PLD application at the INRS Canada.

The PulseMaster 880 is clearly visible in this PLD laboratory setup in

Italy at the CNR IMM - Istituto per la Microelettronica e i Microsistemi Bologna

The plume as material deposits on the substrate with high energy

creating dense coatings

LIDAR
The powerful ultra-violet beam of the excimer is providing important insights into the workings of our atmosphere.

Excimer based LIDAR in Canada's Far North, this system studies ozone in
the stratosphere using 308nm UV light

Terminology

The term excimer is short for 'excited dimer', while exciplex is short for
'excited complex.' Most "excimer" lasers are of the noble gas halide type, for which the
term excimer is strictly speaking a misnomer (since a dimer refers to a molecule of two
identical or similar parts): The correct but less commonly used name for such
is exciplex laser.
[edit]History
The excimer laser was invented in 1970[1] by Nikolai Basov, V. A. Danilychev and Yu. M.
Popov, at the Lebedev Physical Institute in Moscow, using a xenon dimer (Xe2) excited
by an electron beam to give stimulated emission at 172 nm wavelength. A later
improvement, developed by many groups in 1975[2] was the use of noble
gas halides (originally XeBr). These groups include the Avco Everett Research
Laboratory,[3] Sandia Laboratories,[4] the Northrop Research and Technology Center,
[5]
and the United States Government's Naval Research Laboratory[6] who also
developed a XeCl Laser[7] that was excited using a microwave discharge.[8]
[edit]Construction
An excimer laser typically uses a combination of a noble gas (argon, krypton, or xenon)
and a reactive gas (fluorine or chlorine). Under the appropriate conditions of electrical
stimulation and high pressure, a pseudo-molecule called an excimer (or in the case of
noble gas halides, exciplex) is created, which can only exist in an energized state and
can give rise to laser light in the ultraviolet range.[9][10]
[edit]Operation
Laser action in an excimer molecule occurs because it has a bound
(associative) excited state, but a repulsive (dissociative) ground state. This is because
noble gases such as xenon and krypton are highly inert and do not usually

form chemical compounds. However, when in an excited state (induced by an electrical

discharge or high-energy electron beams, which produce high energy pulses), they can
form temporarily-bound molecules with themselves (dimers) or with halogens
(complexes) such as fluorine and chlorine. The excited compound can give up its
excess energy by undergoing spontaneous or stimulated emission, resulting in a
strongly repulsive ground state molecule which very quickly (on the order of
a picosecond) dissociates back into two unbound atoms. This forms a population
inversion.
[edit]Wavelength

determination

The wavelength of an excimer laser depends on the molecules used, and is usually in
the ultraviolet:

Excimer

Relative Power
mW

Wavelength

Ar2*

126 nm

Kr2*

146 nm

Xe2*

172 & 175 nm

ArF

193 nm

60

KrF

248 nm

100

XeBr

282 nm

XeCl

308 nm

50

XeF

351 nm

45

KrCl

222 nm

25

Excimer lasers, such as XeF and KrF, can also be made slightly tunable using a variety
of prism and grating intracavity arrangements.[11]
[edit]Repetition

rate

Excimer lasers are usually operated with a pulse repetition rate of around 100 Hz and a
pulse duration of ~10 ns, although some operate at pulse repetition rates as high as
8 kHz and some have pulsewidths as large as 30 ns.
For electric discharge pump see: Nitrogen laser.
[edit]Major

applications

The ultraviolet light from an excimer laser is well absorbed by biological

matter and organic compounds. Rather than burning or cutting material, the excimer
laser adds enough energy to disrupt the molecular bonds of the surface tissue, which
effectively disintegrates into the air in a tightly controlled manner through ablation rather
than burning. Thus excimer lasers have the useful property that they can remove
exceptionally fine layers of surface material with almost no heating or change to the
remainder of the material which is left intact. These properties make excimer lasers well
suited to precision micromachining organic material (including certain polymers and
plastics), or delicate surgeries such as eye surgery LASIK.
Excimer lasers are widely used in high-resolution photolithography machines, one of the
critical technologies required for microelectronic chip manufacturing. Current state-ofthe-art lithography tools use deep ultraviolet (DUV) light from the KrF and ArF excimer
lasers with wavelengths of 248 and 193 nanometers (the dominant lithography
technology today is thus also called excimer laser lithography [12][13][14][15]), which has
enabled transistor feature sizes to shrink below 45 nanometers. Excimer laser
lithography has thus played a critical role in the continued advance of the socalled Moores law for the last 20 years.[16]
The most widespread industrial application of excimer lasers has been in deepultraviolet photolithography,[12][14] a critical technology used in the manufacturing

of microelectronic devices (i.e., semiconductor integrated circuits or chips).

Historically, from the early 1960s through the mid-1980s, mercury-xenon lamps had
been used in lithography for their spectral lines at 436, 405 and 365 nm wavelengths.
However, with the semiconductor industrys need for both higher resolution (to produce
denser and faster chips) and higher throughput (for lower costs), the lamp-based
lithography tools were no longer able to meet the industrys requirements. This
challenge was overcome when in a pioneering development in 1982, deep-UV excimer
laser lithography was proposed and demonstrated at I.B.M. by Kanti Jain.[12][13][14][17] With
phenomenal advances made in equipment technology in the last two decades, and
today microelectronic devices fabricated using excimer laser lithography totaling $400
billion in annual production, it is the semiconductor industry view [16] that excimer laser
lithography has been a crucial factor in the continued advance of Moores law, enabling
minimum features sizes in chip manufacturing to shrink from 0.5 micrometer in 1990 to
32 nanometers in 2010. This trend is expected to continue into this decade for even
denser chips, with minimum features approaching 10 nanometers. From an even
broader scientific and technological perspective, since the invention of the laser in 1960,
the development of excimer laser lithography has been highlighted as one of the major
milestones in the 50-year history of the laser.[18][19][20]
The high-power ultraviolet output of excimer lasers also makes them useful for surgery
(particularly eye surgery) and for dermatological treatment. Excimer laser light is
typically absorbed within under a millionth of a meter (nanometer) of tissue. In 1980
1983, Rangaswamy Srinivasan,Samuel Blum and James Wynne at IBMs T. J. Watson
Research Center observed the effect of the ultraviolet excimer laser on biological
materials. Intrigued, they investigated further, finding that the laser made clean, precise
cuts that would be ideal for delicate surgeries. This resulted in a fundamental
patent[21] and Srinivasan, Blum and Wynne were elected to the National Inventors Hall of
Fame in 2002. Subsequent work introduced the excimer laser for use in angioplasty.
[22]
Kansas State University pioneered the study of the excimer laser which
made LASIK surgery possible.[1][dead link] Xenon chloride (308 nm) excimer lasers can
also treat a variety of dermatological conditions including psoriasis, vitiligo, atopic
dermatitis, alopecia areata and leukoderma.
For applications in deep-UV photolithography for semiconductor chip manufacturing,
excimer lasers have been highly industrialized, making them extremely reliable and
easily serviceable. However, as light sources, excimer lasers are generally large in size,

which is a disadvantage in their medical applications, although their sizes are rapidly
decreasing with ongoing development.
Excimer lasers are also widely used in numerous fields of scientific research, both as
primary sources and, particularly the XeCl laser, as pump sources for tunable dye
lasers, mainly to excite laser dyes emitting in the blue-green region of the spectrum. [23][24]