As electronic devices shrink and computing power demands soar, chip designs must become even more compact. This requires lasers with tighter beam stability, higher pulse‑to‑pulse energy consistency, and nanometer‑scale positioning accuracy.
Bloom Laser, based in Pessac, France, designs and produces pulsed lasers of exceptional beam quality—with laser beam quality factor (M2) values <1.2. To achieve these values and enhance the performance of their lasers, the company relies on a beam propagation analyzer to deliver core measurement data including astigmatism, asymmetry, and M2.
Measurements are taken at each step of the development and manufacturing processes to ensure the beam quality of the lasers. For continuous power measurement, two sensor discs are integrated into each laser system for remote diagnostics and maintenance.
Durable lasers
High-power pulsed lasers are essential drivers of continued miniaturization and densification for the semiconductor industry. But the requirements of these nanoscale applications are enormous. Lasers within critical micromachining environments must deliver highly precise beams and also be robust in 24/7 production lines.
Manufacturers also expect uninterrupted operations for tens of thousands of operating hours. Bloom Lasers specializes in high-end pulsed lasers for micromachining and mainly focuses on ultraviolet (UV) and green wavelengths. Their lasers are used globally for high-end applications such as drilling vias or cutting printed circuit boards (PCBs), panel-level advanced packaging (ablation, drilling, cutting), and wafer-level processing (scribing and dicing).
Ease of use, consistent measurements are key
During Bloom Lasers’ production capacity ramp-up at Cité de la Photonique (also in Pessac), a new measurement technology was deemed necessary. The company was using an Ophir M2-200s device from MKS, but the integrated lens of this device of this now-discontinued model couldn’t capture laser beams with larger diameters. New M2 measurement devices were needed for several production lines with diverse requirements: It must be able to measure M2, astigmatism, and asymmetry, as well as be suitable for various wavelengths and different pulse durations within the nanosecond and picosecond range.
The company’s engineers selected three M2 measurement devices and put them through extensive testing. One was ruled out because the measurement results weren’t accurate, while another was too slow and demonstrated significant weaknesses in usability.
An Ophir BeamSquared device, the successor to the Ophir M2-200s, outperformed the others, and the Bloom Laser engineers found it was easy to use and that it delivered all relevant measurement data within 20 seconds. To check UV laser beams—the device setup on the bench remains the same—they simply swap to a UV lens, change the laser wavelength in the software, and start measuring.