Selective Laser-Chemical Polishing

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Already today, there is an increasing miniaturization of functional components, especially in the medical technology, where metallic thin films and micro-components have to by polished and structured selectively. Therefore, the industry is still using the manual polishing. But here, in addition to an acute lack of skilled workers, there is a shortage of offspring and the dependence of the processing quality on the particular worker. Additionally the handling of ever smaller components becomes difficult. New investigations show the need for the development of new polishing processes. Here, the research focused mainly on laser polishing methods as a selective machining process. However, methods of laser polishing are connected with high temperatures and melt on the work piece surface. Temperature sensitive materials cannot be processed sufficiently. The laser-chemical process allows a selective and material friendly machining. The material removal is a result of laser-induced thermochemical reactions between an etchant and metal atoms at the surface of the work piece. The aim of this project is to clarify the outstanding issues regarding the achievable surface quality in dependence of process parameters, surface roughness and grain size of the materials. The knowledge gained in this project will be used for an efficient development of this gentle processing method.