Nashua, NH - Laser micromachining contract manufacturing services provider Resonetics has received a patent for laser ablation technology that can be tuned to selectively remove one layer without affecting the underlying layer, which is important for ablating layers or coatings in medical devices or diagnostic products, as they require precision, reliability, and consistency.
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The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office recently issued a Notice of Allowance for the company's new patent for "Precision Laser Ablation." The patent addresses a frequent challenge in micromachining: selectively removing one or more layers of a multilayer structure by laser ablation. The patent, according to the company, covers a method of continuous remote monitoring of the ablation plasma plume to automatically discriminate one layer from another, and stop ablation before damaging the underlying layer. This method can be applied to laser machining by step-and-repeat, beam, or target scanning, as well as stripping or skiving of wires and catheters.
"There is tremendous pressure in the life sciences industry to improve product performances while simultaneously driving down costs," says Tom Burns, CEO of Resonetics. "This invention improves the manufacturing yields of medical devices and diagnostic products, as our closed-loop technology compensates for geometric and coating variations of wires, catheters, and wafer substrates while still guaranteeing tight tolerances on the order of a single micron."
For more information, please visit www.resonetics.com.