Excimer laser ablation of Y-SiAlON

Materials processing with an excimer laser source attracts much attention as a very simple method for microfabrication and machining, specially in the case of hard ceramic composites. The present work focuses on KrF-excimer laser irradiation of yttrium-stabilized, sintered Si–Al–O–N, known as sialon. Low angle X-ray diffraction, energy dispersive X-ray analysis, Auger electron spectroscopy and surface profilometry are exploited at various stages of the laser irradiation procedure in order to delineate the different steps of the sialon photochemical decomposition and ablation. q1998 Elsevier Science B.V.