A Perspective to Control Laser-Induced Periodic Surface Structure Formation at Glancing-Incident Femtosecond Laser-Processed Surfaces

Abstract

The favorable combination of high material removal rate and low influence on the material beneath the ultra-short pulsed laser-processed surface are of particular advantage for sample preparation. This is especially true at the micrometer scale or for the pre-preparation for a subsequent focused ion beam milling process. Specific surface features, the laser-induced periodic surface structures, are generated on femtosecond laser-irradiated surfaces in most cases, which pose an issue for surface-sensitive mechanical testing or microstructural investigations. This work strives for an approach to enhance the surface quality of glancing-incident laser-processed surfaces on the model material copper with two distinctly different grain sizes. A new generalized perspective is presented, in which optimized parameter selection serves to counteract the formation of the laser-induced periodic surface structures, enabling, for example, grain orientation mapping directly on femtosecond laser processed surfaces.

Preparing High-Quality Cross-Section Surfaces by Ultrashort Pulse Laser Ablation and Plasma FIB

“…LIPSS can be reduced by limiting the number of pulses per spot. [3] Here we present the most recent findings on laser parameter optimization where we separately focus on the cross-section cleanup process by using both optimized laser parameters and low energy Plasma FIB. (figure 1) Optimized laser parameters were systematically determined for the following materials: steel, copper, aluminum, glass and polymer resins.…”