Development of Laser Welding and Treatment of Surfaces

Dear Colleagues,

Laser processing in industrial applications is already widely used with welding and cutting technologies, surface cladding, micro- and nanostructuring, drilling, additive manfacturing, and surface treatment. However, due to new laser sources with outstanding power, beam shaping, and pulse characteristics, new technologies are constantly being developed, which opens up new processes with highest quality and productivity. Improved and adapted energy deposition in welding allows welding results with highly reproducible welding depth and a minimum of surface roughness, factors which are both important for joining in medical applications as well as battery technology. High power ultrafast lasers, on the other hand, allow surface manufacturing with almost no thermal degradation of the material and enable new surface functionalities, which are based on a micro- and nanometer scale. However, many of the influencing factors for process quality and process efficiency are not yet fully understood, and therefore, there is a need for in-depth investigations of energy deposition, melt flow behavior, ablation processes and characteristics, as well as of the resulting functionalities.

This Special Issue focuses on new laser-based welding and laser surface processing technologies and basic investigations into the influencing factors for this technology. The topics of interest for this Special Issue, in particular, include (but are not restricted to):

• Novel laser welding technologies using adapted energy deposition to improve quality and efficiency;
• Beam shaping approaches for adapted energy deposition in laser joining;
• Joining of different material combinations and dissimilar materials;
• Laser-based surface structuring by ultra-short pulsed lasers;
• Laser modification of surfaces to generate functional surfaces for tribological, optical, and design properties;
• Adapted beam guiding and shaping technologies for increasing productivity while maintaining the quality of ultrafast laser beam processing;
• Any other aspects of laser-based surface structuring.

Dr. Arnold Gillner
Guest Editor

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