Enhanced depth control of ultrafast laser micromachining of microchannels in soda-lime glass

Femtosecond laser micromachining has progressed considerably in the last decade due to the increasing interest in glass microsystems. In this work, we present a systematic study of the femtosecond laser ablation rate of soda-lime glass as a function of the deposited energy and pulse overlapping parameters. Experimental results demonstrate that the incubation effect reported by other authors can be neglected for particular process conditions and a constant ablation rate can be obtained, thus enhancing the depth control of the fabricated features.