Micro and Nano Laser Pulses for Melting and Surface Alloying of Aluminum with Copper

Abstract

In the present work, the use of microsecond and nanosecond laser pulses to alloy copper in aluminum is presented. In the first run, high purity (99.999%) copper thin film was thermally evaporated over (99.9%) purity, 300 μm aluminum sheet. Thereafter, surface alloying was performed using (1–3) 500 μs, (0.1–1.5) Joule Nd: YAG laser pulses; operating at 1060 nm wavelength. Hard homogeneous alloyed zone was obtained at depths between 60 and 110 μm below the surface. In the second run, 9 ns laser pulses from Q-switched Nd: YAG laser operating at 1060 nm was employed to melt/alloy Al-Cu sheets. The resulted alloyed depth, after using 20 laser pulses, was 199.22 μm for Al over Cu samples and 419.61 μm for Cu over Al samples. X-ray diffraction and fluorescence analysis revealed the formation of Cu2Al2, CuAl2 and δ- Al4Cu9 phases with percentage depended on laser energy and copper layer thicknesses.