Femtosecond Laser Ablation of Implantable Materials

Femtosecond laser ablation is a powerful tool for the fabrication of medical devices, especially with materials commonly used in implantable micro devices as these materials are often incompatible with traditional machining techniques. Laser machining quality is highly dependent not only on the laser parameters, but also on the material that is being machined and so the process must be characterized for each material of interest. In this work, process characterization is presented for two materials commonly used in implantable micro devices — polyimide and silicon. The ablation threshold and etch rate were determined for femtosecond laser machining with a UV wavelength.