Modification of Polymeric Surfaces with Ultrashort Laser Pulses for the Selective Deposition of Homogeneous Metallic Conductive Layers.

In recent years, the demand for highly integrated and lightweight components has been rising sharply, especially in plastics processing. One strategy for weight-saving solutions is the development of conductive tracks and layouts directly on the polymer housing parts in order to be able to dispense with the system integration of additional printed circuit boards (PCB). This can be conducted very advantageously and flexibly with laser-based processes for functionalizing polymer surfaces. In this work, a three-step laser-based process for subsequent selective metallization is presented. Conventional injection molded components without special additives serve as the initial substrate. The Laser-Based Selective Activation (LSA) uses picosecond laser pulses to activate the plastic surface to subsequently deposit palladium. The focus is on determining the amount of deposited palladium in correlation to the laser and scan parameters. For the first time, the dependence of the metallization result on the accumulated laser fluence (Facc) is described. The treated polymer parts are characterized using optical and scanning electron microscopy as well as a contact-type profilometer.

Three-dimensional evaluation of subsurface damage in optical glasses with ground and polished surfaces using FF-OCT.

Subsurface damage (SSD) induced during conventional manufacturing of optics contributes mainly to a reduction in the performance and quality of optics. In this paper, we propose the application of full-field optical coherence tomography (FF-OCT) as a high-resolution and nondestructive method for evaluation of SSD in optical substrates. Both ground and polished surfaces can be successfully imaged, providing a path to control SSD throughout the entire optics manufacturing process chain. Full tomograms are acquired for qualitative and quantitative analyses of both surface and SSD. The main requirements for the detection of SSD are addressed. Data processing allows the removal of low-intensity image errors and the automatic evaluation of SSD depths. OCT scans are carried out on destructively referenced glass samples and compared to existing predictive models, validating the obtained results. Finally, intensity projection methods and depth maps are applied to characterize crack morphologies. The experiments highlight differences in crack characteristics between optical glasses SF6 and HPFS7980 and illustrate that wet etching can enhance three-dimensional imaging of SSD with FF-OCT.