New Process for Cutting of Flexible Ceramics and Glasses in Roll-to-Roll Configuration

Laser cutting of thin flexible ceramics and glasses (<100μm thickness) is challenging due to the incurred brittleness and unfavorable thermal and optical properties of such materials. We describe a novel curvilinear laser cutting process integrated with a mechanical separation step to scribe the material surface. A short pulse laser source is used to precisely pattern a line of aligned elliptical recesses on the material surface. The orientation of the ellipses defines a preferred scribing path. Tensile stress is applied to the path which causes fracture and completes the cut. The resulting fractured surface is of higher quality and strength than surfaces cut using full body laser cutting techniques, while the crystalline phase is preserved. Maintaining the phase of the material can be crucial depending on the material. The optical setup is simple, low cost, and compatible with roll-to-roll manufacturing. This process is a single step and of higher quality than mechanical and laser cutting equivalents with an advantage of competitive processing speeds. The process has more flexibility than filamentation methods and is particularly suited to thin non-transparent ceramic materials which have limited laser cutting techniques available. The technique has been applied to flexible yttria-stabilized zirconia ceramic and borosilicate glass substrates. The mechanically inspired laser scribing process offers an alternative for processing thin flexible ceramics on a roll-to-roll configuration for applications such as solid-state batteries, displays, organic LEDs, photovoltaics, and smart sensors for medtech.