Sapphire lenses have the advantages of wear resistance, scratch resistance, good transparency, and high hardness, and are widely used in fields such as aviation, defense, LED, medical, and consumer electronics. However, due to sapphire being a hard and brittle material, traditional mechanical processing is prone to phenomena such as cracks, fragments, delamination, chipping, edge damage, and tool wear. Laser cutting technology is a high-speed and high-quality cutting method that is effective for sapphire crystals. For cutting, it has fast processing speed, good cutting quality, and can cut any shape. Below are several main factors that affect the quality of sapphire cutting:

1. Laser type

Laser is a beam of light that undergoes physical reactions with materials to achieve cutting or drilling effects. Laser is divided into cold light and hot light. For fragile materials such as sapphire and glass, cold light is required because the impact of hot light can cause sapphire to shatter.

2. Cutting speed

For a given sapphire material and laser power, the cutting speed generally follows an empirical formula. As long as it is above the threshold, the cutting speed of the material is proportional to the laser power, that is, increasing the power can improve the cutting speed. For cutting sapphire lenses, the laser cutting speed can have a relatively adjustable range while keeping other process parameters constant.

3. Auxiliary gas

The basic requirement for auxiliary gas in laser cutting is a large gas flow, so that there is enough nitrogen to undergo exothermic reaction with the cutting material, and enough power to blow away the melted material at the cutting site. When cutting sapphire at high speed, increasing gas pressure can improve cutting speed and prevent the formation of slag on the back of the incision. But if the pressure is too high, the cutting surface will become rough. During the cutting process, impurities contained in nitrogen gas have a negative impact on cutting quality, so the purity of nitrogen gas needs to be high.

Sapphire lenses are commonly used as protective windows for sensors and detectors, with excellent surface hardness and a transmittance range from ultraviolet to mid infrared wavelengths, and high hardness can only be scratched by a few substances. The substrate has chemical inertness and is insoluble in water, common acids, or bases at temperatures up to approximately 1000 ° C.