Microfabrication of Three-Dimensional Structures in Polymer and Glass by Femtosecond Pulses

We report three-dimensional laser microfabrication, which enables microstructuring of materials on the scale of 0.2-1 micrometers. The two different types of microfabrication demonstrated and discussed in this work are based on holographic recording, and light-induced damage in transparent dielectric materials. Both techniques use nonlinear optical excitation of materials by ultrashort laser pulses (duration < 1 ps).Comment: This is a proceedings paper of bi-lateral Conf. (Republics of China & Lithuania) on Optoelectronics and Magnetic Materials, Taipei, May 25-26, 2002.

Femtosecond laser microfabricated devices for biophotonic applications

Femtosecond Laser DirectWriting has emerged as a key enabling technology for realising miniaturised biophotonic applications offering clear advantages over competing soft-lithography, ion-exchange and sol-gel based fabrication techniques. Waveguide writing and selective etching with three-dimensional design flexibility allows the development of innovative and unprecedented optofluidic architectures using this technology. The work embodied in this thesis focuses on utilising the advantages offered by direct laser writing in fabricating integrated miniaturised devices tailored for biological analysis. The first application presented customised the selective etching phenomenon in fused silica by tailoring the femtosecond pulse properties during the writing process. A device with an embedded network of microchannels with a significant difference in aspect-ratio was fabricated, which was subsequently applied in achieving the high-throughput label-free sorting of mammalian cells based on cytoskeletal deformability. Analysis on the device output cell population revealed minimal effect of the device on cell viability. The second application incorporated an embedded microchannel in fused silica with a monolithically integrated near-infrared optical waveguide. This optofluidic device implemented the thermally sensitive emission spectrum of semiconductor nanocrystals in undertaking remote thermometry of the localised microchannel environment illuminated by the waveguide. Aspects relating to changing the wavelength of illumination from the waveguide were analysed. The effect of incorporating carbon nanotubes as efficient heaters within the microchannel was investigated. Spatio-thermal imaging of the microchannel illuminated by the waveguide revealed the thermal effects to extend over distances appreciably longer than the waveguide cross-section. On the material side of direct laser writing, ultra-high selective etching is demonstrated in the well-known laser crystal Nd:YAG. This work presents Nd:YAG as a material with the potential to develop next-generation optofluidic devices

Implementation of nearly single-mode second harmonic generation by using a femtosecond laser written waveguiding structure in KTiOPO4 nonlinear crystal

We propose a hybrid photonic structure to realize guided-wave second harmonic generation (SHG) from near-infrared (NIR at 1064 nm) to visible (green light at 532 nm) wavelength with nearly single-mode output. The periodically arrayed tracks have been produced in KTiOPO4 nonlinear crystal by femtosecond laser writing, which enable efficient light field confinement with cladding-like refractive index distributions. Particularly, the track-cladding surrounded central region is free of any tracks, which serves as waveguiding cores. With designed core diameters, the structures could enable single-mode propagation at selected wavelength regime on purpose. In this work, the hybrid structure contains a larger-input core section and a connected smaller-output core section, which in principle supports nearly single mode for either fundamental pump beam or second harmonic beam in the input and output channel, respectively. Based on this hybrid structure we implement nearly single-mode SHG at 532 nm, and comparable normalized conversion efficiency (1.1%/W/cm) in the continuous-wave (CW) regime is obtained with respect to that (1.2%/W/cm) of multimode SHG from a single large-core channel structure. This work paves the way to realize mode profile controlling for selected wavelength by using laser-written arrayed tracks.The work is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (61775120); Junta de Castilla y León (Project SA046U16) and MINECO (FIS2013-44174-P, FIS2015-71933-REDT)

High-throughput three-dimensional lithographic microfabrication

A 3D lithographic microfabrication process has been developed that is high throughput, scalable, and capable of producing arbitrary patterns. It offers the possibility for industrial scale manufacturing of 3D microdevices such as photonic crystals, tissue engineering scaffolds, and microfluidics chips. This method is based on depth-resolved wide-field illumination by temporally focusing femtosecond light pulses. We characterized the axial resolution of this technique, and the result is consistent with the theoretical prediction. As proof-of-concept experiments, we demonstrated photobleaching of 3D resolved patterns in a fluorescent medium and fabricating 3D microstructures with SU-8 photoresist.Deshpande Center for Technological Innovation (Massachusetts Institute of Technology. School of Engineering)Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology (SMART

Nanoscale local modification of PMMA refractive index by tip-enhanced femtosecond pulsed laser irradiation

Investigation techniques based on tip-enhanced optical effects, capable to yield spatial resolutions down to nanometers level, have enabled a wide palette of important discoveries over the past twenty years. Recently, their underlying optical setups are beginning to emerge as useful tools to modify and manipulate matter with nanoscale spatial resolution. We try to contribute to these efforts by reporting a method that we found viable to modify the surface refractive index of polymethyl methacrylate (PMMA), an acrylic polymer material. The changes in the refractive index are accomplished by focusing a femtosecond pulsed near-infrared laser beam on the apex of a metalized nano-sized tip, traditionally used in scanning probe microscopy (SPM) applications. The adopted illumination strategy yields circular-shaped modifications of the refractive index occurring at the surface of the PMMA sample, exhibiting a lateral size <200 nm, under 790 nm illumination, representing a four-fold increase in precision compared to the current state-of-the-art. The light intensity enhancement effects taking place at the tip apex makes possible achieving refractive index changes at low laser pulse energies (<0.5 nJ), which represents two orders of magnitude advantage over the current state-of-the art. The presented nanoimprinting method is very flexible, as it can be used with different power levels and can potentially be operated with other materials. Besides enabling modifications of the refractive index with high lateral resolution, this method can pave the way towards other important applications such the fabrication of photonic crystal lattices or surface waveguides

Direct femtosecond laser writing of 3D photonic structures in rare-earth doped lithium niobate = escritura directa mediante láser de femtosegundos de estructuras fotónicas 3D en niobato de litio dopado con iones de tierras raras

Tesis doctoral inédita. Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Facultad de Ciencias, Departamento de Física de Materiales. Fecha de lectura: 18-12-200