A new technique for creating curved interior holes on ultrathin glass based on picosecond laser drilling and thermo-shock separation

Flawless glass cutting is traditional important task for related applications ranged from large scale window application to small scale mobile display device assembly. Recently, the cutting of strengthened glass becomes critical due to their residual tensile stress. This paper describes a novel technique for dealing cutting inner holes and separation of strengthened ultrathin glass for the display unit of mobile communication and computational devices. This method integrates the picosecond laser ablation with quenching induced thermo-shock for accomplishing such a task. Experimental results indicate that the proposed method could achieve successful separations for various enclosed shapes with the surface roughness satisfying the requirement. However, temperature control is critical. Currently, the associated thermo-mechanical finite element analyses are conducted for optimizing the process design.