Femtosecond laser structuring of diamond tool tips for microoptics fabrication

Within this work we investigate ultra precision fs-laser processing of mono- and polycrystal diamond to modify diamond tool tips for ultra precision turning, grinding and milling. As long as these tools are generated by commonly used precision grinding techniques the shapes of the tool tips are limited to very simple geometries, e.g. planes, cylinders and spheres. Furthermore thermal stress and process induced forces limit the achievable structures to the size of some ten to hundred microns in diameter and small aspect ratios. Processing with the use of fs-laser pulses thermal induced stress and process forces are negligible so that the structure size is only limited by the laser focus diameter and the precision of the positioning system. It is possible to generate almost every geometrical tip shape by direct laser writing into the diamond, independent of its crystal orientation