Thin-film removal using ultrashort laser pulses

Summary form only given. The use of lasers for surface cleaning and thin film removal has emerged as a promising technology that meets the above requirements. During the last several years this technique has been rapidly moving into commercial applications. Most of these applications, however, require removing coatings that are not strongly adherent to the surface. In the case of oxide films, the major obstacle is controlling significant damage to the underlying surface. For our initial experiments we used commercial Nd:YAG laser system (Q-switched, pulse duration 7 ns) to remove a thermally grown SiO/sub 2/ coating from the surface of a Si wafer.