Towards Rapid Fabrication of Superhydrophobic Surfaces by Multi-Beam Nanostructuring with 40,401 Beams

Abstract

Superhydrophobic surfaces attract a lot of attention due to many potential applications including anti-icing, anti-corrosion, self-cleaning or drag-reduction surfaces. Despite a list of attractive applications of superhydrophobic surfaces and demonstrated capability of lasers to produce them, the speed of laser micro and nanostructuring is still low with respect to many industry standards. Up-to-now, most promising multi-beam solutions can improve processing speed a hundred to a thousand times. However, productive and efficient utilization of a new generation of kW-class ultrashort pulsed lasers for precise nanostructuring requires a much higher number of beams. In this work, we introduce a unique combination of high-energy pulsed ultrashort laser system delivering up to 20 mJ at 1030 nm in 1.7 ps and novel Diffractive Laser-Induced Texturing element (DLITe) capable of producing 201 × 201 sub-beams of 5 µm in diameter on a square area of 1 mm2. Simultaneous nanostructuring with 40,401 sub-beams resulted in a matrix of microcraters covered by nanogratings and ripples with periodicity below 470 nm and 720 nm, respectively. The processed area demonstrated hydrophobic to superhydrophobic properties with a maximum contact angle of 153°.

Process Optimization for Manufacturing Functional Nanosurfaces by Roll-to-Roll Nanoimprint Lithography

“…UV resin filling process into the nanopores is different than the nanopillars due to the reverse filling direction. For simple understanding in the case of hydrophobic surfaces, if the gap between two consecutive nanocavities is less, then fabricated nanosurfaces will show more hydrophobicity for antiwetting phenomena [ 20 ]. It is also observed during the numerical simulation that the UV resin easily fills into nanopillars with zero-gap during RTR imprinting, but it is impossible to fill into the nanopores with zero-gap for RTR imprinting because in the reverse direction the filling is impossible between the edges of two consecutive nanocavities.…”

LIDT testing as a tool for optimization of processing window for D263 glass sheet TGV treatment

“…This enables very efficient splitting of the beam by diffractive optical elements (DOE), and parallel processing with all advantages of picosecond diffraction-limited Gaussian beams [3]. Parallel processing by > 40 000 beams by Perla platform has already been demonstrated in the past [5]. Similar effect offers Perla for interference patterning and creation of LIPSS and functional surfaces in general [6] [7].…”

Femtosecond laser processing of advanced technical materials

“…However, a low process productivity, coupled with the high cost of devices, remains a significant limit. There are several approaches to increasing productivity, including both newly developed methods, such as burst mode [10,11] or multi-beam technique, [12] and more conventional methods, such as optimization of wavelength [2], in-creased repetition rate [2,13,14] or changes in the pulse duration [15]. There are fewer studies of conventional methods, even though optimisation of the repetition rate, energy and wavelength can increase the productivity of the ablation process several-fold on an existing laser equipment.…”