Microestruturado de vidrio mediante irradiación laseraplicaciones en micro-óptica y microfluídica

Abstract

The aim of this thesis is to develop a method for fabricating microlens and microfluidic microchannels on soda-lime glass. The method consists in a combination of the laser direct write technique for fabricating the promoting glass structures, a wet chemical etching to remove the imperfections generated during laser ablation and a thermal treatment for reshaping and or improving of the optical and morphological qualities of the generated microlens and microfluidic microchannels. The fabrication process developed includes the benefits of using lasers commonly implemented for laser processing of materials applications, which makes the technique presented in this thesis highly competitive compared with other techniques commonly used on glass microstructuring. Using the laser-direct write technique, the chemical etching and the thermal treatment it was possible to fabricate microlenses of diameters 40 µm, 60 µm and 140 µm. In parallel to the fabrication process, it was investigated the interaction between a laser beam and the glass materials, and mechanism of the ablative process using a thin film layer deposited over the glass. It has been demonstrated the structuring capabilities of microlens arrays over a variety of different material, such as stainless steel, aluminium, copper and polymer. Surface multi-drilling, debris removing and surface texturing were faced. Improvement in microlenses durability has been obtained by separating the microlenses from the target thanks to the exploitation of the Talbot effect.