Dortmund, Germany - LIMO has announced that a laser source that can be used for surface heating by involving a special application of the Activation Line 300, the most powerful L³ LIMO Line Laser source.
"Imagine that a surface with a functional layer only a few micrometers thin is to be heated to over 1000C," says Dipl.-Ing. Dirk Hauschild, Director of Thin-Film Activation at LIMO Lissotschenko Mikrooptik GmbH in Dortmund. "And think about doing this with a substrate that is already destroyed at 500C." But it doesn't stop there: The layers that are to be optimized are often composed of small particles or molecules which lose their desired properties and structural size just a few seconds after the processing temperature has been reached.
“Here, there is a demand for fast and targeted heating and cooling. This challenge can be met with the use of an in-line high-temperature process that provides targeted surface heating in a matter of milliseconds. The Activation Line 300 was specifically designed to fill this need. With its high electro-optic energy efficiency of over 40%, the most powerful L³ LIMO Line Laser (a CW output of over 13 kW with a homogeneous line focus 300 mm long) heats even the thinnest functional layers (thicknesses of over 0.1 micron to more than 100 micron) with an intensity of 40 kW/cm² in a few milliseconds – delivering outstanding precision and consistency (beam quality M² < 3 in the processing direction) in the process. Because of the low thermal capacity, the layers also cool down again very quickly.
"The laser energy thus serves to functionalize the layer and, as a result, add to its value," says Hauschild. "Thanks to the targeted irradiation using the laser line profile, the user can uniformly temper large surface areas. The Activation Line 300 thus enables customized annealing, crystallization and sintering processes with fully closed surfaces."
"Precision tempering of coatings on glass, metal, ceramics, films and even on paper is also possible," adds Hauschild.