Laser-Induced Line Melting and Cutting

We study the application of pulsed laser radiation in the melting and cutting of conducting lines. These processes are used to realize both deletive and additive redundancy techniques, common in defect avoidance and customization processes. We discuss the theory of laser-beam application to aluminum lines, and show how the various beam and substrate parameters affect the properties of the irradiated zone. Closed-form analytical expressions have been obtained for the relevant quantities. No adjustable parameters are involved in the calculation of the various thermal properties. An analytical examination of the resulting molten zone properties has been performed in order to fully quantify the use of laser melting in customization and wafer-scale applications. The experimental results compare well with the theoretical predictions.