From Theory to Application: Understanding the Core Advantages of Cold Processing with Ultraviolet Lasers

This article will explore the core principles of ultraviolet cold processing technology, combining its high precision, non-thermal melting characteristics, and adaptability to different materials. It will also examine its practical applications in the fields of electronic components and medical equipment, and provide industry users with a reference for selecting the right technology.

What's so special about ultraviolet laser cold processing?

Let's put aside the technical terms for a moment and use a couple of analogies: Traditional laser processing is like "cutting butter with a hot knife," which can burn and deform the edges of a material. Ultraviolet laser processing is more like "carving with an ice needle," which uses short wavelengths and high photon energy to directly break molecular bonds, producing virtually no heat.This characteristic makes it especially suitable for processing brittle materials or delicate parts, such as the cutting of cellphone screens or the etching of microchips.

A hard core of technical principles.

Where do ultraviolet rays get their "super powers"?

The UV laser has a wavelength of around 355nm, more than three times shorter than the infrared laser.The shorter the wavelength, the smaller the spot size of the focused light. It's like writing with a finer pen point, and the precision can be broken through the micron level with ease.In addition, single-photon lasers have high energy, which makes it possible to "smash" the molecular structure of the surface of a material without heating it up, thus achieving a "cold process" effect.

How can cold processing avoid "injuring" the material?

For example, when using traditional lasers to cut sapphire glass 0.1 millimeters thick, the edges of the glass will have tiny cracks visible to the naked eye, while the edges of glass cut with UV lasers are smooth and even under a microscope.The key is that the heat does not have time to be conducted into the material, and the stress in the material is hardly changed at all.

Real-world applications.

A savior for precision electronics manufacturing

Nowadays, the flexible printed circuits (FPCs) in mobile phone camera modules are becoming thinner and thinner. With UV lasers, it is possible to make precise cuts in lines as thin as 0.05 mm in width, which increases the yield of good products by more than 20 % over conventional methods.A technical manager at one of the top mobile phone OEMs told me, "We now dare to take orders with high scrap rates, and customer complaints have been cut by half.(Chang Ching-hsien / tr. by Jonathan Barnard)

The safety of medical equipment.

When dealing with implantable devices like vascular stents, the heat-affected zone must be kept to 5 microns or less.Not only can ultraviolet lasers do this, they can also create microscopic structures on the titanium surface that encourage cell attachment.The head of the medical equipment department of a top-tier hospital in Beijing reports, "The infection rate after surgery has obviously dropped, and the patients recover more quickly.I have a lot of friends.

Three things to avoid when buying equipment.

The more powerful the better?

Many manufacturers advertise high-power lasers, but for processing silicon wafers, 20 watts is more than enough.But blindly going for high power actually doubles the cost of purchasing the equipment and also increases the costs of maintenance.

Don't be taken in by "imported parts.

It is indeed necessary to pay attention to the brand names of the laser and galvanometer, but the performance of the whole system depends on the level of integration.Last year a company in Shenzhen bought a German brand of CNC machine, but the light path alignment was off, and the actual processing efficiency was actually less than that of the optimized domestic models.

After-sales service.

Before placing an order, try calling the manufacturer's service department after 5 p.m. on a weekday.One time, we had a system crash at 2 a.m. The local company's technicians arrived with spare parts within three hours, two days faster than the foreign brand.The ability to respond in this way is directly related to the cost of production line shutdowns.

What else can they do in the future?

Recently, I saw a team that combined ultraviolet lasers with artificial intelligence to automatically identify and repair defects in ceramic substrates.Although they are still in the laboratory stage, it is expected that they will be applied in the semiconductor packaging field within three years.For those companies that are thinking about setting up their next generation of production lines, now is the time to start paying attention to these trends.