Digital Multimirror Devices for laser-based Manufacturing

This proposal falls under the Manufacturing with light call and investigates the use of digital multimirror devices (DMDs) to perform controlled laser ablative machining, and multiphoton polymerisation for subtractive and additive laser-based manufacturing respectively. We will process a range of materials such as metals, semiconductors, paper, high value items such as gemstones, as well as polymers and biocompatible polymers. DMDs are computer-addressable arrays of reflective mirrors (typically up to one million mirrors per chip), which can have a pattern such as a letter, logo or even a full-page display imposed on the array surface. A laser pulse can then be reflected off the patterned mirror array and the image demagnified by several orders of magnitude before being directed to the workpiece intended for machining. The laser energy density at the workpiece can be high enough to cause ablative material removal or multiphoton polymerisation in the exposed regions, thereby 'printing' a minified version of whatever was displayed on the DMD.

Rapid laser-based single-shot machining of complex patterns at micron (or even smaller) size scales is a novel and industrially-relevant process technology. The programme here is to extend our DMD-based machining to the manufacturing sector, in areas such as security, safety, anti-counterfeiting, MEMS and silicon photonics, biocompatible templates and more. The programme will optimise this laser-based processing technology and then apply it to the widest range of materials across the identified user spectrum. We will engage with engineers and technologists as well as laser-based manufacturing companies who have a need for rapid, low cost and flexible processing techniques.

The main beneficiaries of this research will be laser integrators (such as LML in the UK), manufacturers of precision systems, those working in security and anti-counterfeiting, the photonics area (and in particular the field of silicon photonics), laser processing of biomaterials, and aviation safety via studies of metal fatigue.

Laser and system integrators will benefit from the generation of new markets for their industrial lasers, when coupled to DMD hardware, and the introduction of new techniques in laser-based processing. The UK can effectively exploit such an opportunity and the PI has also worked in the past (in both academic and laser fabrication contexts) with one of the founders of M-SOLV, a major laser materials processing company near Oxford.

We have identified and will work with as project partners, several companies and industries in the areas of marking, printing, security, and processing of biomaterials. All of these have immediate relevance to the interest of society in the context of job creation, greater levels of security, safety and financial stability (in the area of anti-counterfeiting and prevention of fraud for example). We see this area of laser-based manufacturing as novel, disruptive and potentially a world-leader.