Femtosecond-pulsed glass welding of chemically tempered aluminosilicate glasses

摘要

High quality thin glasses are emerging materials that find vast areas of applications in screen technologies, VR, microfluidics and solar cells. Due to the density of the glass material and the miniaturization trend in devices, thinner glasses are needed in the industry. Hence, in high-tech applications glasses and devices thin glasses are mostly used after a tempering process to achieve durability needed by the application. Some of the applications and design geometries necessitate these glasses to be welded. But due to the balance between compressive strength and tension inside glass is very delicate, laser processing of tempered glass is risky and may cause the glass to shatter if this balance is disturbed during a laser processing. Here we report, to our knowledge, first tempered glass welding of chemically tempered glasses using fs pulsed laser. We developed a fs laser system with adjustable parameters and integrated with a spiral scanning system to keep the stress load at minimum to prevent the shattering of the tempered glass due to stress. We observed successful welded regions in mm~2 areas, by keeping the glasses transparent and intact.