Material processing

Different material processing activities are on-going now at Multitel, from laser welding to micromachining. The Applied Photonics Department possesses a very performant and flexible system that permits to test any type of lasers under development for material processing applications. The system is composed of a galvanometric head equipped with a holder for a microscope objective and precise translation stages.

A versatile tool...

Then the system allows to make very high speed processes with relatively low minimum features size (about 20 µm with a F-Theta lens in a galvanometric head); and very precise "low" speed tests by using high numerical aperture objectives and then obtain resolutions below 1 µm.

A wide range of wavelengths available:

The system can operate in the near-IR, visible and UV. This feature permits to choose the wavelength of operation in function of the materials optical properties.

References

Project MUSICAL:  Project funded by the walloon region, on the area of ultra-short pulse laser processing of solar cells. The project aims at exploring the sub-10ps, ultra-short regime for scribing of solar cells. The project started in January 2009 for a duration of three years.

Project ECOLAS: Project funded by the walloon region, on the area of fibre lasers for eco-friendly processes. Multitel is active in various fields in this project, in particular on laser welding The project started in September 2009 for a duration of two years.

Different processes have already been demonstrated like for instance welding, marking, scribing, cutting and drilling; and applied in many materials like thin metal sheets, glass, ceramics, polymers, metals, and solar cells. 

Beyond those R&D activities, Multitel proposes also services and studies on laser processing.