Corning Incorporated announced that the company’s Corning Laser Technologies (CLT) business has further developed its Corning® nanoPerforation technology to cut glass with thicknesses up to 10 mm in a single pass – providing the benefits of the laser cutting combined with simultaneous high throughput.
The new capability can also be used to cut complex shapes, coated glass, and stacked glass structures, such as those used in smart windows.
New structural and design features in advanced architectural glass, including smart window applications, are increasingly difficult to achieve with conventional glass-cutting methods. Ultrashort pulsed lasers offer the possibility for a very confined energy deposition, resulting in high-quality laser cuts. With advancements in laser technology and commercial availability of industrial, ultrafast laser sources with even higher power and pulse energy, CLT is able to scale the laser-cutting performance, enabling thicker glass materials or functionalized and stacked glasses to be accurately cut at high processing speeds.
“By incorporating enhanced thick glass capabilities into our current platforms to advance our laser cutting portfolio, we’re able to provide highly economical, reliable, and scalable solutions for laser cutting of architectural glass and other complex structures, opening the doors to new possibilities,” said Michael Mueller, business director, Precision Glass Solutions & Corning Laser Technologies.
Laser cutting of thick glass
Glass thicknesses of greater than 3 mm, which are common in architectural applications, have traditionally required multi-pass cutting. Although this method still delivers highquality cuts, it compromises the throughput. By using a high-power laser source and appropriately tailoring the temporal and spatial beam properties, CLT can shape the laser beam interaction zone within the glass to nanoPerforate through glass up to 10 mm thick in a single pass.
Laser cutting of functionalized and stacked glass
CLT’s thick glass laser-cutting capability can also be used to cut functionalized, stacked, and coated glass. An actively switchable window consists of a stack of at least two glass sheets – the inner surfaces coated with a transparent conductive oxide (TCO) and the active material between. CLT optimized a process for the half-cut, obtaining the desired nanoPerforation of the upper sheet with minimum damage to the TCO layer of the lower sheet.
