Femtosecond laser ablation and nanoparticle formation in intermetallic NiAl

Abstract

The ablation behavior of a stoichiometric intermetallic compound-NiAl subjected to femtosecond laser pulsing in air has been investigated. The single-pulse ablation threshold for NiAl was determined to be 83 ± 4 mJ/cm 2 and the transition to the high-fluence ablation regime occurred at 2.8 ± 0.3 J/cm 2. Two sizes of nanoparticles consisting of Al, NiAl, Ni 3 Al and NiO were formed and ejected from the target during high-fluence ablation. Chemical analysis revealed that smaller nanoparticles (1-30 nm) tended to be rich in Al while larger nanoparticles (>100 nm) were lean in Al. Ablation in the low-fluence regime maintained this trend. Redeposited material and nanoparticles remaining on the surface after a single 3.7 J/cm 2 pulse, one hundred 1.7 J/cm 2 pulses, or one thousand 250 mJ/cm 2 pulses were enriched in Al relative to the bulk target composition. Further, the surface of the irradiated high-fluence region was depleted in Al indicating that the fs laser ablation removal rate of the intermetallic constituents in this regime does not scale with the individual pure element ablation thresholds.

Surface ablation and threshold determination of AlCu4SiMg aluminum alloy in picosecond pulsed laser micromachining

“…However, the ablation threshold of aluminum alloy in ultrafast pulsed laser micromachining was ignored in the above mentioned studies. In regard to research on the ablation thresholds of pure aluminum and its alloys, Jorgensen et al [25] obtained the single-pulse ablation threshold of femtosecond laser for NiAl alloy to be 83 ± 4 mJ cm À2 . Le Drogoff et al [31] determined the ablation threshold of aluminum thin films for plasma formation to be approximately 0.1 J cm À2 by subpicosecond laser pulses.…”

“…In the aspect of metal materials, many studies have focused on stainless steel, gold, silver, copper, platinum, tungsten, chromium, niobium, molybdenum, nickel, nickel-base alloy, titanium, and titanium alloy [13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24]; however, ablation mechanisms and thresholds of aluminum and its alloys have not been extensively investigated, and the available few studies on aluminum and its alloys generally focused on the micro-nanostructure characteristics of ultrafast laser processing, laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy, and laser shock peening on pure aluminum or aluminum alloy. Jorgensen et al [25] formed the nanoparticles using femtosecond laser ablation in intermetallic aluminum-nickel (NiAl) alloy. The laser ablation efficiency of aluminum alloy by a femto/nanosecond dual-beam micromachining system was enhanced by Lin et al [26].…”

Reconstruction of Laser-Induced Surface Topography from Electron Backscatter Diffraction Patterns

“…As a result of the beam scanning direction, the Gaussian profile of the laser pulses decays radially as it approaches the sample surface, ablating all material above the ablation threshold of the material, as shown in Figure 1b. The laser ablation events at the surface are the product of thousands of femtosecond pulse irradiation events near the ablation threshold for nickel and nickel alloys, which has been measured to be between 0.10 and 0.38 J/cm 2 (Feng et al, 2005; Amoruso et al, 2007; Ma et al, 2007; Semaltianos et al, 2009; Jorgensen et al, 2015). The sample is incrementally raised into the scanned beam path, at 1 μ m steps for this experiment, in order to ensure that only the tail of the Gaussian distribution is irradiating the sample surface.…”

New aspects of femtosecond laser ablation of Si in water: a material perspective

“…Existing literature reports on the generation of nanoparticles from different classes of materials (i.e. metals, semiconductors, and insulators) using ultrafast lasers in a liquid medium [39][40][41][42][43][44]. Metal nanoparticles generated from the bulk targets of plasmonic materials have shown wide ranging applications.…”