Prof Saulius Juodkazis (Swinburne tehnikaülikool, Austraalia)

High average power 10W and high repetition rate ~1 MHz of ultra-short sub-1 ps lasers have become a widely available, affordable and reliable tool for material processing. We showed that average power of ultra-short lasers is increasing exponentially and follows the Moore’s law from 2000 [1]. Review of current developments in industrial applications of ultra-short lasers will be presented with focus on laser ablation, patterning, nanoscale alloying, and nano-texturing over large areas with cross sections in tens-of-centimeters.

Current strength of fs-laser processing is in the fields of micro- machining: cutting, drilling, inscribing refractive index patterns and waveguides.  Complexity of approaches where fs-laser microfabrication is combined with other material processing steps including plasma etching and sputtering, thermal post-processing further strengthens versatility of fs-laser micro-fabrication. Radiation of X-rays and THz from the light-matter interaction region during laser processing can be used for characterisation of interactions as well as utilised as a radiation source. We review recent results.

[1] M. Han, D. Smith, S.H. Ng, V. Anand, T. Katkus, S. Juodkazis, Ultra-Short-Pulse Lasers—Materials—Applications, 2021, Eng. Proc., 11, 44.

About speaker

Saulius Juodkazis is Professor of nanophotonics and Director of the nanotechnology facility at Swinburne’s Centre for Micro-Photonics. His current research is focused on applying principles of light-field enhancement and its spectral control for applications in micro-optics, sensing, solid-state lighting, and solar energy conversion.