Femtosecond laser assisted selective etching of microchannels in lithium niobate
Publication date
2023-11-06
Document type
Forschungsartikel
Organisational unit
Publisher
Optica Publishing Group
Series or journal
Optics Express
ISSN
Periodical volume
31
Periodical issue
23
First page
37618
Last page
37629
Peer-reviewed
✅
Part of the university bibliography
✅
Language
English
Abstract
Here, we report on the fabrication of cm-long microchannels in LiNbO_3 by selective etching of femtosecond laser inscribed tracks using hydrofluoric acid. We achieved a 1 cm long microchannel after 300 h of etching a single track inscribed into the volume along the optical axis of LiNbO_3. Furthermore, we investigated the dependence of the etching behavior on various writing parameters. Highly selective etching with a selectivity up to 10^4 was achieved and a functional relationship between the etched depth and time was found. Thus, our results set the first milestone for future fabrication of 3D-hollow microstructures in the volume of LiNbO_3 combining its outstanding physical properties such as the strong nonlinearity as well as the acousto- and electrooptic properties with both microfluidic and photonic structures in a monolithic setup.
Description
This is an open access article under of the Optica Open Access Publishing Agreement (https://doi.org/10.1364/OA_License_v2#VOR-OA).
Version
Published version
Access right on openHSU
Metadata only access