Abstract
Recently, there has been increasing interest in direct ablation of materials by short-pulse laser beams. Materials under study vary from thin metal films, metal and semiconductor compounds, and inorganic insulators to polymers, including human hair and photoresists. In this paper, a review of the UV laser ablation of polymers is presented, Srinivasan pioneered in the held of polymer ablation by far-UV (193-iun) pulses. Subsequently, polymer ablation with lasers at a few longer wavelengths has been reported. To date, understanding the etching mechanism and identifying the contributions from photochemical and photothermal activities continue to be the outstanding challenge. The technological issues and the material etching behavior, which varies with laser frequency, fluence, laser pulse length, and material optical absorption, will be discussed for microelectronic applications. © 1986, American Vacuum Society. All rights reserved.