Laser drilling of metals with a XeCl excimer laser

This thesis is about laser drilling with a unique excimer laser with a nearly diffraction-limited beam and relatively long optical pulse duration of 175 ns. The combination of high processing speed and high processing quality suitable for industrial applications can be obtained because the excellent beam quality enables usage of the entire beam instead of using mask projection techniques, which is common for excimer lasers. The research described in this thesis contributes to the fundamental understanding of the underlying processes for drilling metals with such a novel excimer laser, which is essential to achieve the highest processing speed and to control the quality of the drilled holes.