To investigate the effects of beam focusing in the etching of polymers with short pulse Excimer lasers, a polymer etching model of SSB's is combined with a beam focusing model. Through the numerical simulation, it was found that in the high laser fluence region, SSB model considering both photochemical and thermal contribution is considered to be suitable to predict the etched hole shape than a simple photochemical etching model. The average temperature distribution into the substance obtained by assuming 1-D heat transfer is found to be fairly similar to the fluence distribution on the ablated surface. The experimental etching data for polymers are used to give material properties for ablation model. The fitted etch depth curve gives a nice agreement with the experimental data.
