Abstract
In recent years, the improved understanding of the formation of laser-induced periodic surface structures (LIPSS) has led to an emerging variety of applications that modify the optical, mechanical, and chemical properties of many materials. Such structures strongly depend on the laser beam polarization and are formed usually after irradiation with ultrashort linearly polarized laser pulses. The most accepted explanation for the origin of the structures is based on the interference of the incident laser radiation with electromagnetic surface waves that propagate or scatter at the surface of the irradiated materials. This leads to an intensity modulation that is finally responsible for the selective ablation in the form of parallel structures with periods ranging from hundreds of nanometers up to some micrometers. The versatility when forming such structures is based on the high reproducibility with different wavelengths, pulse durations and repetition rate laser sources, customized micro- and nanometric spatial resolutions, and compatibility with industrially relevant processing speeds when combined with fast scanning devices. In this contribution, we review the latest applications in the rapidly emerging field of surface functionalization through LIPSS, including biomimetic functionalities on fluid transport, control of the wetting properties, specific optical responses in technical materials, improvement of tribological performance on metallic surfaces, and bacterial and cell growth for medical devices, among many others.
Highlights
We review the latest applications in the rapidly emerging field of surface functionalization through laser-induced periodic surface structures (LIPSS), including biomimetic functionalities on fluid transport, control of the wetting properties, specific optical responses in technical materials, improvement of tribological performance on metallic surfaces, and bacterial and cell growth for medical devices, among many others
Just a few years after the discovery of the first laser in the 1960s, Birnbaum[1] reported the first experimental study on a sample of germanium that presented “a regular system of parallel straight lines” after laser irradiation, known nowadays as laser-induced periodic surface structures (LIPSS), often termed briefly “ripples.” This breakthrough has given birth to a new and proliferous branch of research that has been exploited during the last few decades in many different publications.[2]
Subsequent studies can be found on different materials such as steel[33] for the creation of holograms, on silver surfaces[34] for a long-lasting coloring application to avoid falsification in Canadian coins, and on silver salts embedded into a porous titania matrix to create layered and LIPSS-periodically arranged Ag-nanoparticle systems to be used for image multiplexing encoding and safety tag applications.[35,36]
Summary
Just a few years after the discovery of the first laser in the 1960s, Birnbaum[1] reported the first experimental study on a sample of germanium that presented “a regular system of parallel straight lines” after laser irradiation, known nowadays as laser-induced periodic surface structures (LIPSS), often termed briefly “ripples.” This breakthrough has given birth to a new and proliferous branch of research that has been exploited during the last few decades in many different publications.[2]. The data are available in the ISI Web of Science database, and they are accessible when searching in “Topic” for the term “Laser-induced periodic surface structures” (gray), indicating presently more than 130 annual publications. Researchers have tried to figure out the physical principles involved in the formation of such structures following different approaches, resulting in the last two decades in the establishment of many different applications in the fields of optics, chemistry, medicine, and tribology, to name a few,[2] as it can be demonstrated when searched for “Laser-induced periodic surface structures + Application” (Fig. 1, red). This article extends and updates our previous reviews on LIPSS2,3 and their applications through various possibilities of surface functionalization.[4,5]
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