Beam shaping with diffractive optics for laser micro-machining of plastics with a femtosecond laser

Microfluidic devices and micro-electro-mechanical systems (MEMS) have become one of the most interesting and important applications in biotechnology, biomedical, pharmaceutical, life sciences, and agriculture. Research in manufacturing technologies used to fabricate these devices is important for improved quality as well as for time and cost savings during mass productions. A new approach for the fabrication of these MEMS devices is the laser ablation using diffractive optics elements (DOE) for beam shaping. In results described in this report, a 775 nm-wavelength high power femtosecond laser was used to ablate circular channels on polystyrene specimens. This approach to creating channels in the polystyrene was found to be promising even though the DOE used was not optimized for the femtosecond laser wavelength.