| Popis: |
In recent years, femtosecond laser processing of human hard/soft tissues has been studied. Here, we have demonstrated ablation etching of hydroxyapatite. Hydroxyapatite (Ca10(PO4)6(OH)2) is a key component of human tooth and human bone. The human bone is mainly made of hydroxyapatite oriented along the collagen. The micromachining of hydroxyapatite is highly required for orthopedics and dentistry. The important issue is to preserve the chemical property of the ablated surface. If chemical properties of hydroxyapatite change once, the human bone or tooth cannot grow again after laser processing. As for nanosecond laser ablation (for example excimer laser ablation), the relative content of calcium and phosphorus in (Ca10(PO4)6(OH)2) is found to change after laser ablation. We used here pulsewidth tunable output from 50 fs through 2 ps at 820 nm and 1 kpps. We measured calcium spectrum and phosphorus spectrum of the ablated surface of hydroxyapatite by XPS. As a result, the chemical content of calcium and phosphorus is kept unchanged before and after 50-fs - 2-ps laser ablation. We also demonstrated ablation processing of human tooth with Ti:sapphire laser, and precise ablation processing and microstructure fabrication are realized.© (2003) COPYRIGHT SPIE--The International Society for Optical Engineering. Downloading of the abstract is permitted for personal use only. |
