Wafer-scale silicon carbide meta-optic platform for robust multi-beam laser processing

Abstract High power laser processing is a cornerstone of modern manufacturing and advanced scientific research, where parallelization is critical for increasing throughput and enabling new capabilities. However, simultaneously achieving high power handling, multi-beam parallelization, and compact optical integration remains a long standing challenge. This trade-off is addressed by establishing a wafer scale silicon carbide (SiC) meta-optic platform that combines three key elements: the thermomechanical robustness of SiC, an aperture matched architecture for dense multi-beam integration, and a scalable semiconductor compatible manufacturing process. The platform integrates a SiC diffractive optical element (DOE) with a wafer scale 26 element SiC metalens array. The array consists of metalenses with a diameter of 1.15 cm and a numerical aperture (NA) of 0.5 and exhibits high uniformity across the array, with a 3σ focal length deviation of 10.73 μm, corresponding to 0.11% of the designed focal length, and an average image normalized focusing efficiency of 93.90%. This architecture converts a large aperture input beam into multiple focusing channels compatible with millimeter to centimeter scale industrial laser beams, with 4, 9, and 26 beam configurations fabricated and characterized. As the front end component exposed to the full incident beam before power division, the SiC DOE experiences the most stringent power handling condition in the architecture and exhibits a continuous wave laser induced damage threshold of 6.11 kW/cm 2 , confirming its suitability for high power beam splitting. These results establish a SiC meta-optic platform for robust high power multi-beam photonic systems and suggest a scalable route toward next generation parallel laser processing.