Investigation on laser micro ablation of metals using ns-multi-pulses

Laser ablation with pulse bursts was studied to increase the ablation rate of steel. Pulse bursts consisting of different numbers of pulses between one and three were used. The microablation with pulses from a multi-pulse Nd:YAG laser with a pulse duration between 20 ns and 60 ns, interpulse separations in the range of 0.1 to 80 µs and burst energies of up to 2 mJ was studied. The process was characterized in terms of ablation rate, ablation geometry, dynamic of plasma expansion and plasma parameters