Large enhancement of femtosecond laser micromachining speed in dye-doped hydrogel polymers

Ophthalmologic hydrogel polymers are doped with Fluorescein or Coumarin dyes prior to the femtosecond laser micromachining process. We find that the achievable micromachining writing speed can be greatly increased while maintaining large refractive index changes (up to +0.08). Compared with previous results in dye-doped polymers that do not contain water such as PMMA, we obtain much larger index changes and much faster writing speeds.