Transient thermal deformation of alumina (Al₂O₃) substrate during laser drilling

The cracking and failure in ceramic substrates during the laser drilling process has been acknowledged as a major problem by designers and manufacturers in the electronic component industries. The cracking and failure is due to large localized thermal stresses within the narrow heat-affected zone on the ceramics. Although the knowledge of the stress distribution in the ceramic substrate is important in understanding and solving the cracking/failure problem, it is impossible to measure the stress directly. The physical parameters of the laser drilling process such as temperatures or displacements, which can be directly related to stresses, can however be measured. That is why, in this research, an electronic speckle pattern interferometer (ESPI) system was designed and used to take speckle pattern images of the ceramic surface during the laser drilling process. Using commercial software, the speckle fringe images were image processed to quantify whole-field transient out-of-plane displacement measurements. A deformation history of the ceramic surface during the laser shaping process with millisecond temporal resolution was obtained, restricted only by the camera frame rate, camera resolution and laser power available. A finite difference model was developed to compare the deformation measurements with the predicted strain calculations. The experimental study and the analysis show that the designed in-situ ESPI system provides an excellent experimental basis for whole-field, transient deformation measurements of ceramic substrates during the laser drilling process.