Industrial applications of ultrahigh precision short-pulse laser processing (Invited Paper)

Short-pulse lasers of femtosecond and picosecond durations are used in ultrahigh precision processing of optical, electronic, and micro-mechanical devices. In this paper we discuss the fabrication of high quality photonic crystal band-pass filters with femtosecond laser pulses. We also discuss the parallel processing of inkjet nozzles with a picosecond laser. A laser milling algorithm and a high accuracy beam scanner allows the formation of precisely shaped holes as inkjet nozzles, and an efficient diffractive beam splitter allows the simultaneous drilling of many hundreds of holes for low cost manufacturing.