Heat Accumulation-Induced Surface Structures at High Degrees of Laser Pulse Overlap on Ti6Al4V Surfaces by Femtosecond Laser Texturing

Farkhod Babadjanov; Uwe Specht; Thomas Lukasczyk; Bernd Mayer

doi:10.3390/ma16062498

Heat Accumulation-Induced Surface Structures at High Degrees of Laser Pulse Overlap on Ti6Al4V Surfaces by Femtosecond Laser Texturing

Materials (Basel). 2023 Mar 21;16(6):2498. doi: 10.3390/ma16062498.

Authors

Farkhod Babadjanov¹, Uwe Specht¹, Thomas Lukasczyk¹, Bernd Mayer^{1

2}

Affiliations

¹ Fraunhofer Institute for Manufacturing Technology and Advanced Materials IFAM, Wiener Str. 12, 28359 Bremen, Germany.
² Faculty of Production Engineering, University of Bremen, 28359 Bremen, Germany.

Abstract

In this work, femtosecond laser pulses at high repetition rates were used to fabricate unique microstructures on the surface of Ti6Al4V. We investigated the influence of pulse overlap and laser repetition rates on structure formation. Laser texturing with a high degree of overlap resulted in melting of the material, leading to the formation of specific microstructures that can be used as cavities for drug delivery. The reason for melt formation is attributed to local heat accumulation at high repetition rates. Such structures can be fabricated on materials with low thermal conductivity, which prevent heat dissipation into the bulk of the material. The heat accumulation effect has also been demonstrated on steel, which also has low thermal conductivity.

Keywords: Ti6Al4V; laser pulse overlap; structures for drug delivery; ultrashort pulsed laser.

Grants and funding

This research received no external funding.