The drive to reduce component size in a variety of industries is bringing lasers into applications formerly addressed by older technologies. Lasers assist in this miniaturization process by providing a highly focused beam that can process very small feature sizes. This focused beam has the benefit of reducing thermal effects during material processing that results in the ability to process thinner and more delicate materials than with other processes. Lasers allow for non-contact processing so there is no tooling wear. And, the beam can be quickly and precisely manipulated resulting in high throughput processing.

Specific micromachining applications of lasers include scribing, cutting, and drilling for production processes of ICs, LEDs, crystalline Si and thin-film solar cells, and rigid or flexible PCBs.

JDSU offers several lasers in the Q Series product family that address micromachining markets