IRD Glass uses high performance hard materials and employs precision machining equipment to produce ceramic components and subassemblies that meet our clients’ exact specifications. Many hard ceramic parts we create have less than .0005” dimensional tolerance. Which is why this news is exciting to us: for the first time ever, ceramic materials were welded together at room temperature using a low-power pulsed laser. The laser welding of ceramic components, which was demonstrated by professors at the University of California, San Diego, could make possible many new applications for electronic and optoelectronic devices.
Why does laser welding of ceramic components matter?
Historically, welding has been very difficult to use with ceramic materials because of the inherent high temperatures required. Because ceramics are poor conductors of heat — usually by design — they can be melted by lasers but readily crack due to large temperature gradients.
The UC San Diego team thought they could avoid cracking by aiming ultrashort laser pulses directly along the edges of the ceramic materials. By pulsing lasers on these areas for short periods, welding could be achieved without heat transferring to the rest of the component.
Turns out they were right so long as:
- The laser pulse duration was limited to 2 ps with a pulse repetition rate of 1MHz, and
- The ceramic material has the optimum balance of light absorption and scattering
Like the UC San Diego team, we know a thing or two about working within very tight parameters.
We use tight process control procedures and quality assurance techniques to reduce cycle time, variations, and eliminate defects and waste from the ceramic fabrication process. IRD will certify the performance and specifications with whatever data you require.
About IRD’s Customized Ceramic Products
Our products are used in high temperature industrial processing of metals, petrochemicals, cement, ceramics and glass, and by manufacturers of equipment for aerospace, automotive, marine and domestic applications.
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