Journal of Materials Research and Technology (Nov 2022)

Enhancement of ablation and ultrafast electron dynamics observation of nickel-based superalloy under double-pulse ultrashort laser irradiation

  • Zhicheng Chen,
  • Lan Jiang,
  • Yiling Lian,
  • Kaihu Zhang,
  • Zenan Yang,
  • Jingya Sun

Journal volume & issue
Vol. 21
pp. 4253 – 4262

Abstract

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Temporally shaped femtosecond laser machining is a flexible and effective method to improve the efficiency and quality of cooling film holes. This study investigated the ablation of nickel-based superalloy by double-pulse femtosecond laser with different pulse-separations and fluences. Compared with single-pulse ablation, approximate 1.5 times enhancement of ablation area was obtained in double-pulse ablation with about 2 ps pulse-separation. By varying the pulse-separations, the ablation area can be tuned, and at the same time, the ablation depth can be kept for little fluctuation. An improved two-temperature model and time-resolved transient reflectivity technique were used for analyzing the ablation mechanisms. We found that more energy deposition can happen from electron system to lattice system for double-pulse ablation, which makes ablation area increase. However, mechanical relaxation started at around 2 ps, which could be suppressed by the pressure wave induced by the second sub-pulse, and finally achieved the maximum ablation area at about 2 ps pulse-separation. Besides, laser-induced subwavelength periodic surface structures were observed under irradiation of multiple pulses. The findings may aid in understanding the ablation mechanism between nickel-based superalloy and femtosecond laser, as well as in optimizing the processing of cooling film holes.

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