Lasers are effective material-processing tools that offer distinct advantages, including choice of wavelength and pulse width to match the target material properties as well as one-step direct and locally confined structural modification. Understanding the evolution of the energy coupling with the target and the induced phase-change transformations is critical for improving the quality of micromachining and microprocessing. As current technology is pushed to ever smaller dimensions, lasers become a truly enabling solution, reducing thermomechanical damage and facilitating heterogeneous integration of components into functional devices. This is especially important in cases where conventional thermo-chemo-mechanical treatment processes are ineffective. Component microfabrication with basic dimensions in the few-microns range via laser irradiation has been implemented successfully in the industrial environment. Beyond this, there is an increasing need to advance the science and technology of laser processing to the nanoscale regime.

The book focuses on examining the transport mechanisms involved in the laser–material interactions in the context of microfabrication. The material was developed in the graduate course on Laser Processing and Diagnostics I introduced and taught in Berkeley over the years. The text aims at providing scientists, engineers, and graduate students with a comprehensive review of progress and the state of the art in the field by linking fundamental phenomena with modern applications.

Samuel S. Mao of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the Mechanical Engineering Department of UC Berkeley contributed major parts of Chapters 5, 6, and 9. I wish to acknowledge the contributions of all my former and current students throughout this text.