Abstract

Laser induced modification and damage in transparent materials (e.g., glass) has attracted considerable interest and been studied since the advent of high power pulsed lasers. Especially while using a femtosecond laser as the irradiation source, the tight focusing and nonlinear nature of the absorption make it possible to confine the absorption to the focal volume inside the bulk of the material, allowing for micromaching in extremely small region. In this talk, we introduce the progress in space-selective modification of glass by using femtosecond laser. We show that some fundamental processes, including valence state change of dopant, decomposition of cluster, element redistribution, phase transition and nanocrystallization, can occur in the femtosecond laser irradiation region inside glass. As a result, the optical response of the modified glass can be controlled. For examples, the luminescence properties of main group ions doped glass can be tuned and tunable luminescence can be achieved. The microstructures with multicolor luminescence can be induced. The results suggest that space-selective modification of glass by using femtosecond laser can be applied to fabricate various types of 3D active microstructures.

© 2017 Japan Society of Applied Physics, Optical Society of America