Laser-assisted glass cleaving

Laser cleaving has been used extensively for brittle materials such as glass sheet and ceramic plate. The main concerns in the industry are cutting quality and efficiency. An innovative technology of the multiple laser system has been proposed in this study. The system consisting of a CO₂ (10.6μm) line-shaped laser and a Nd-YAG (1.06μm) pulsed laser was applied to cleave a soda-lime glass substrate. Due to a high absorption of the Nd-YAG laser at a high temperature state of the soda-lime glass preheated by the CO₂ line-shaped laser to generate a mixture fracture mode on the substrate, the stress distribution on the glass cleaved by the laser beams has been analyzed and it was based on the uncoupled thermal-elastic finite element method (FEM). The results show that the stress field of the cleavages is caused by a complex stress state and significantly affected by the pulsed laser. A clean cutting surface of the soda-lime glass substrate can be obtained experimentally due to a rise of the shear stress in the interior of the glass substrate heated by the pulsed laser.