The working mechanism of femtosecond (and picosecond for that matter) micromachining is the same as the coulomb explosion being discussed here. In the industry it is usually referred to 'athermal' or 'cold' to differentiate from the older system which rely on thermally heating the material to ionize it.

In fact it is mentioned explicitly in the wikipedia article:

>Coulomb explosions for industrial machining are made with ultra-short (picosecond or femtoseconds) laser pulses...Coulomb explosion etching can be used in any material to bore holes, remove surface layers, and texture and microstructure surfaces