Investigations on energy deposition in polycarbonate by picosecond laser pulses for welding applications

Over the past decade, much research has been done on micro welding of glass by ultrashort lasers pulses. Due to the nonlinear absorption process, the material modification is only confined to the focal volume which enables precise processing at low thermal stress. However, only few articles are available on welding of transparent polymers by ultrashort laser pulses. In this paper, a new approach is used on local melting of polycarbonate by focusing 10 ps laser pulses with up to 400 kHz frequency as preliminary work for welding applications. The influence of different parameters and irradiation strategies on the shape of the modifications were investigated.