Hi all,

I am rather familiar with laser ablation, but my beliefs have been
somewhat shaken recently, after talking with a laser processing
company representative: I believed that excimer laser's large-area
beam profile made them unsuitable for scribing, and that the only way
to create narrow channels or vias, was by placing a mask to reduce the
beam profile, and then demagnify what's left - but that would reduce
the pulse energy drastically. Hence, not the best choice for deep
scribing of some materials, where a DPSS is much better.
This guy, however, stated taht an excimer beam can be focused to a
very tiny spot.

Wht gives? Is my definition of tiny (~1 um) different from his?
(consider that a DPSS laser has an almost pure TEM00 beam mode, while
the excimer beam is non-coherent, and much, much wider.

Thanks in advance!

Ned