SMART AND SCALABLE MANUFACTURING OF MICROARCHITECTURAL FUNCTIONAL MATERIALS BY MULTI-FIELD ULTRAFAST LASER PROCESSING

 Microarchitectural or nano- functional materials are critical to industry and scientific research owning to their special properties derived from their tiny sizes and subsequently increased surface area. However, they are also expensive and a pain to make. 

The large-scale manufacturing of microarchitectural functional materials can often be complex and difficult. Considering the following factors: (1) the capability of attaining the desired physical and chemical properties and morphology for target nano-materials; (2) the quality of nano-materials in industrial-scale production; (3) the ability to incorporate nanosized materials into a matrix of standard material to form strengthened nano-composites; (4) the feasibility to transfer laboratory-scale research to industrial manufacturing; (5) the stability of reliability of manufacturing technique; and (6) cost and environmental safety of the process, the industrial use of nano-materials faces many obstacles as there is no suitable technique to meet every demands. 

Laser processing has a wide range of applications from micro/nano fabrication to surface treatment, re-construction, element doping, composition modification, and shock peening. Compared to the longer pulse width lasers, ultrafast laser pulses are unique in the incredibly high peak intensities and the laser-matter interactions on a timescale faster than lattice disorder and heat diffusion do. These two features enable ultrafast laser to precisely tune and engineer the states of materials. Herein, we utilized picosecond (ps) laser as energy source with multiple field (thermal, magnetic, pressure, etc.) to explore the feasibility of large-scale manufacturing microarchitectural materials with desired functions.