Direct write patterning of ITO film by Femtosecond laser ablations

Indium tin oxide (ITO) is a commonly used conducting transparent oxide film (CTO) used in flat panel display applications. Direct write laser ablation is sometimes employed for ITO patterning and it is important that the substrate material and remaining ITO be affected as little as possible by the laser ablation. In this investigation, femtosecond laser ablation of ITO was studied to identify laser processing parameters which cleanly ablated ITO with a minimum of damage to a glass substrate and surrounding ITO. The Ti:Sapphire chirp pulse amplified femtosecond laser used for the experiments had a wavelength of 775nm and produced pulses with a duration of 150fs at a rate of 2 kHz. Ablation was carried out at a sufficiently high panel scanning speed that single ablation spots could be studied. The pulse energy was adjusted to determine feasible spot diameters and depths which could be ablated into the ITO without damaging the glass substrate. Next, ablation of lines without glass damage was also demonstrated. Experiments were also performed with a high repetition rate (100kHz) femtosecond laser.