Excimer lasers as tools for material processing in manufacturing

Since their initial demonstration 20 years ago, excimer lasers have developed from physicists' "toys" to powerful tools, offering unique benefits to a wide range of applications. Nearly all technical (plastics, ceramics, glasses, metals, semiconductors, composites) and biological/medical materials can be structured by the intense ultraviolet (UV) laser lights. Drilling of microholes for ink jet nozzle heads and for MCM microelectronic packaging, stripping of very tiny wires, annealing of TFT's for flat panel displays and high quality marking are well-known industrial introduced examples of this technique. Recently two very important breakthroughs were achieved. The first is in regard to the performance of the excimer laser itself. The second one is a much more advanced way of using UV photons more efficiently.