Laser-induced changes in titanium by femtosecond, picosecond and millisecond laser ablation

Abstract

In order to realize the qualitative control of the laser-induced changes trend and the quantitative control of the laser-induced changes range in titanium upon laser irradiation with different pulse duration, comparative ablation experiments by femtosecond, picosecond and millisecond pulsed lasers were carried out on titanium in this study. Then the final surface morphology, aspect ratio, chemical composition and microstructural state of the ablated titanium were analyzed by laser scanning confocal microscopy, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy and transmission electron microscopy, respectively. The dependency of the morphology, size, composition and microstructure of ablated titanium on laser pulse duration variation were emphatically discussed. It is found that, as the laser pulse duration increases from femtosecond to millisecond scale, surface morphology quality of ablated titanium gets worse, aspect ratio of microgroove decreases, proportion of titanium oxides in final ablation products becomes larger and the microstructural state of ablated titanium has a higher amorphization degree, which can be attributed to the decreased laser intensity per pulse and enhanced heat conduction effect in titanium with the pulse duration increasing.

Keywords:

• titanium
• laser pulse duration variation
• laser-induced change

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by National Natural Science Foundations of China [Nos. 51405333, 51175372, 51275337]; Independent Innovation Foundation of Tianjin University [No. 1405] and Open Foundation of Key Laboratory of Mechanism Theory and Equipment Design of Ministry of Education in Tianjin University.