High-speed surface texturing with Jasper fs laser

Large-area surface functionalization using ultrafast lasers has become increasingly popular over the last decade. The use of full laser power is challenging due to low optimum fluence required for metal texturing. There are several ways to increase the throughput of femtosecond laser surface processing including beam shaping with lasers of high pulse energy or polygon scanners for lasers of high pulse repetition rate and high average power. 

In cooperation with PowerPhotonic, Fluence has demonstrated record productivity in surface nanopatterning (LIPSS) using a top-hat beam shaper. We obtained a 408 cm²/min process speed of covering the surface of the steel with nanoripples <1 µm using only 18 W average power. The achieved efficiency of 22.8 cm²/W*min is over two times greater than other reports based on polygon scanners or multibeam DOE. With an industrial-grade 60 W Jasper fiber laser providing 100 µJ pulse energy, the process efficiency can be scaled up to >1300 cm²/min and approaches 1m² in less than 8 minutes.