High speed direct laser writing in microchannels

This report is the result of the bachelor thesis assignment of Niels Spannenburg. The goal of the assignment was to gain experience with using a newly acquired piece of cleanroom equipment, the Nanoscribe Photonics Professional, and to apply this experience to solve the problem of low writing speeds. Additional goals were to identify and create structures of interest and exploring writing inside microchannels. Theoretical and practical work has been done to increase the writing speed of the Nanoscribe Photonics Professional. Multiple methods to decrease writing times have been explored. Optimal values for the laserpower, piezo scan speed and settling time when writing structures with the machine were determined. A speedup of over 186x was achieved. Microfilters, woodpiles and multiple kinds of pillars were successfully designed, scripted, fabricated and characterized. For the first time structures were written directly inside microchannels. Coherent anti-Stokes Raman and fluorescence spectroscopy were explored and found to be suitable for characterizing polymerized structures inside microchannels.