Hazardous gas containment chamber

[Henri Sallinen]

Stumbled accross this video on YouTube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eGJ2WZRdUPA


There Jeri shows a way to contain the hazardous gases emitted from lasering certain hazardous materials. Some of you might have been thinking of lasering old LP-records but since they produce hazardous gasses, that has been a no-no. Could this be the way to do it?

Any thoughts/experiences on using a silicon wafers with CO2 lasers? There would still be a problem of where to place the gas from the cutting box and where to get a polished silicon wafer the larger than 12" (~31cm) if you plan on lasering LP-records..

[Dan Hintz]

Sure, it's a useable method... last I checked, they manufacture Si wafers up to 16" in diameter (though hold onto your hat once you see the pricing).

That said, I would call it a kludge for anything other than small item processing. A better method would be to properly shield your system's components against the offgassing and work without fear.

[Ernie Balch]

An interesting idea, I thought she would flood the chamber with an inert gas. I have seen setups with Ar, N2 and He depending on what you wanted to accomplish. I even set up a water filled chamber and used a UV 355nm YAG laser to do micro-machining of glass and silicon parts for micro fluidics devices.

I once worked with a company that built laser based silicon etching systems. By introducing Cl into a chamber and drawing with the laser they could cut the silicon device from the backside for semiconductor device research applications.