The use of femtosecond laser pulses allows precise and thermal-damage-free removal of material (ablation) with wide-ranging scientific, medical and industrial applications. However, its potential is limited by the low speeds at which material can be removed and the complexity of the associated laser technology. The complexity of the laser design arises from the need to overcome the high pulse energy threshold for efficient ablation. However, the use of more powerful lasers to increase the ablation rate results in unwanted effects such as shielding, saturation and collateral damage from heat accumulation at higher laser powers. Here we circumvent this limitation by exploiting ablation cooling, in analogy to a technique routinely used in aerospace engineering. We apply ultrafast successions (bursts) of laser pulses to ablate the target material before the residual heat deposited by previous pulses diffuses away from the processing region. Proof-of-principle experiments on various substrates demonstrate that extremely high repetition rates, which make ablation cooling possible, reduce the laser pulse energies needed for ablation and increase the efficiency of the removal process by an order of magnitude over previously used laser parameters. We also demonstrate the removal of brain tissue at two cubic millimetres per minute and dentine at three cubic millimetres per minute without any thermal damage to the bulk.
Dynamical systems based on the interplay of nonlinear feedback mechanisms are ubiquitous in nature [1][2][3][4][5] . Well-understood examples from photonics include mode locking 6 and a broad class of fractal optics 7 , including self-similarity 8 . In addition to the fundamental interest in such systems, fascinating technical functionalities that are difficult or even impossible to achieve with linear systems can emerge naturally from them 7 if the right control tools can be applied. Here, we demonstrate a method that exploits positive nonlocal feedback to initiate, and negative local feedback to regulate, the growth of ultrafast laser-induced metal-oxide nanostructures with unprecedented uniformity, at high speed, low cost and on non-planar or flexible surfaces. The nonlocal nature of the feedback allows us to stitch the nanostructures seamlessly, enabling coverage of indefinitely large areas with subnanometre uniformity in periodicity. We demonstrate our approach through the fabrication of titanium dioxide and tungsten oxide nanostructures, but it can also be extended to a large variety of other materials.The fabrication of nanostructures on surfaces is of paramount importance in nanotechnology and materials science 9 . There are several established techniques, including photolithography, electron-beam lithography, imprint lithography 10 and laser interference lithography 11 , as well as non-conventional approaches such as selfassembly 12 and direct laser writing 13 . These techniques require either high-cost, complex systems or offer limited flexibility. An alternative flexible and potentially very low-cost method is laserinduced periodic surface structuring (LIPSS). The first observation of LIPSS dates back to 1965 14 . However, after almost 50 years and a large body of published work that has demonstrated LIPSS on various metals, semiconductors and glasses [15][16][17][18][19] , the method has not found widespread use due to the stubborn problem of quality control 18,19 .Despite the evident role of self-assembly in the LIPSS process, uniformity and long-range order remain poor, a problem we identified as originating from the fact that the structures are initiated from multiple seed locations concurrently and independently, thereby producing an irregular pattern. Because the process is irreversible, without self-correction, these irregularities become frozen. Our solution to this relies on carefully exploiting feedback mechanisms to tightly regulate the formation of nanostructures induced by ultrashort pulses. This process can be summarized in three steps.(1) The laser beam, with a peak intensity close to the ablation threshold for titanium, is focused on a titanium surface, where it is scattered by existing nanostructures or any surface defects 15 . The interference of the scattered and incident fields leads to intensity variations in the immediate neighbourhood of the scattering point. (2) At points where the threshold intensity for ablation is exceeded, titanium reacts rapidly with O 2 from the air, form...
Abstract:We propose and demonstrate the use of short pulsed fiber lasers in surface texturing using MHz-repetition-rate, microjoule-and sub-microjoule-energy pulses. Texturing of titanium-based (Ti6Al4V) dental implant surfaces is achieved using femtosecond, picosecond and (for comparison) nanosecond pulses with the aim of controlling attachment of human cells onto the surface. Femtosecond and picosecond pulses yield similar results in the creation of micron-scale textures with greatly reduced or no thermal heat effects, whereas nanosecond pulses result in strong thermal effects. Various surface textures are created with excellent uniformity and repeatability on a desired portion of the surface. The effects of the surface texturing on the attachment and proliferation of cells are characterized under cell culture conditions. Our data indicate that picosecond-pulsed laser modification can be utilized effectively in low-cost laser surface engineering of medical implants, where different areas on the surface can be made cell-attachment friendly or hostile through the use of different patterns. 192-203 (1997) Lett. 17, 733-737 (2004). 25. S. P. S. Porto, P. A. Fleury, and T. C. Damen, "Raman spectra of TiO2, MgF2, Zn F2, FeF2, and MnF2," Phys. Rev. 154, 522-526 (1967
We report laser emission from single, stationary, Rhodamine B-doped glycerol/water microdroplets located on a superhydrophobic surface. In the experiments, a pulsed, frequency-doubled Nd:YAG laser operating at 532 nm was used as the excitation source. The microdroplets ranged in diameter from a few to 20 µm. Lasing was achieved in the red-shifted portion of the dye emission spectrum with threshold fluences as low as 750 J/cm 2 .Photobleaching was observed when the microdroplets were pumped above threshold. In certain cases, multimode lasing was also observed and attributed to the simultaneous lasing of two modes belonging to different sets of whispering gallery modes. a) akiraz@ku.edu.tr b) asennar@ku.edu.tr
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