Etching and drilling of through-holes in thin glass by means of picosecond Bessel beams

In this paper, we present a laser etching and drilling technique for thin glass materials based on the use of finite-energy pulsed Bessel beams orthogonally impinging on the sample surface. Thanks to the elongated focal zone of the quasi-non-diffractive beam, the laser processing can be performed without scanning the beam position along the thickness of the transparent material sample, but simply moving the sample in the plane orthogonal to the beam. We first present the results of single-shot glass microfabrication performed to identify the optimal laser parameters needed for an efficient internal material ablation. We then describe the micromachining technique used for etching the dielectric material at glass–air interfaces and for generating, without chemical etching, through-holes in thin glasses.