Direct laser pyrolysis of nanostructured micro components

Abstract

The following paper discusses the production of free form nanostructure components for micro system engineering or rapid prototyping applications. In contrast to previous procedures, e.g. laser sintering of ceramics powders, the ceramic components will be directly produced by laser generation from a liquid precursor. The component will be built up layer by layer, thus shrinkage and crack formation due to entrapped gas or internal stress can be avoided. During the conversion from polymer precursor to ceramic the two processes polymerisation and pyrolysis take place. Furthermore, the energy for this step by step conversion will supplied by a pulsed Nd:YAG laser. To achieve a reaction within a defined small area around the focus point, a decrease of energy density on the path of the laser beam through the liquid precursor is necessary. One way to obtain this is to split the laser beam in two or more beams. On the other hand, material and processing development is important to control the absorption properties of the precursor and the assembling of the produced ceramic.