Laser Induced Deep Etching of Glass (Printed Electronics USA 2019)

In the past, glass has been mostly used as a substrate material or electric barrier in a wide range of applications. It's rigidity, mechanical strength, chemical resistance and finally its transparency made it perfect as a two-dimensional barrier material. At the same time, glass has been known to be processed with difficulty due to its susceptibility to mechanical damage during drilling and cutting procedures.

LPKF´s state of the art Laser Induced Deep Etching (LIDE) technology finally enables a damage-free technique to cut and drill a wide variety of transparent glass types such as alumino-borosilicate glasses, display glasses and even fused silica with thicknesses ranging between 50 µm and 1000 µm. With such a capability, the making of micro-structures has been achieved, enabling the formation of pockets for packaging, micro-channels for fluidics and even hinges. This latter allows thick glass materials to be spatially foldable and even flexible. Such processed glass materials can be used as cover or backplane glasses in smartphone production, foldable substrates for wearables and even as a rigid cover material with integrated flexible parts for covering edges or the implementation of active elements such as buttons or as partly flexible substrates for sensor applications.

Since 2014, Dr. Daniel Dunker has been a project manager and researcher at LPKF Laser & Electronics evaluating a wide variety of new technologies for industrial application. For the past three years, he has been working with LPKF´s Laser Induced Deep Etching Technology. During this time, he has been responsible for process development and optimization and for the finding of new fields of interest for the technology, such as display production, microfluidics, shadow masks and packaging.

Daniel Dunker studied physics at the Technical University of Dortmund in the field of Spintronics and earned his doctorate degree doing research with a focus on Quantum Photonics and semiconductor nanostructures.

LPKF Laser & Electronics AG has been developing and producing material processing machines since 1976. LPKF systems are used in IC Packaging, Display manufacturing, PCB drilling and PCB assembly, medical and automotive applications and in the production of solar cells.

The basis for all laser systems is the wide-ranging knowledge of optics as well as drive and control technology, supplemented by our own software and expertise in high-end mechanical engineering.

With more than 670 employees at its headquarters in Garbsen near Hanover and at locations in Europe, Asia and North America, the company has a broad global presence.