TESTING THE POTENTIAL OF COMMERCIAL GRADE LASER CUTTERS TO OPEN APERTURES IN POLYTETRAFLUOROETHYLENE (“TEFLON”) FILMS

Commercial CO₂ laser cutters are ubiquitous in industrial fabrication, yet their capacity for precision micro-machining of polymer membranes for biomedical and microfluidic applications remains largely unexplored. We show that an off-the-shelf desktop laser cutter can reproducibly ablate micron-scale apertures in 25 µm Teflon (PTFE) films. Using a 50 mm focal-length lens, apertures were produced while the head translation speed was systematically varied; ImageJ analysis of thresholded micrographs yielded the effective radius and circularity of each aperture. A ten-fold increase in scan speed produced a predictable 50 % decrease in aperture radius, demonstrating fine control of feature size through dwell time. The principal limitation of the current protocol is the moderate circularity (≈ 0.5). Numerical analysis indicates that replacing the 50 mm lens with a 25 mm lens—thereby doubling the numerical aperture—should reduce the lateral spot size, increase energy density and enhance edge regularity. These findings highlight the promise of low-cost laser cutters for rapid aperture fabrication in thin films and outline straightforward optical modifications to approach true micro-machining performance for emerging bioanalytical applications.