Laser surface modification to enhance brazing joints

Abstract

Laser generated topographical and chemical modifications are introduced on metallic surfaces to affect the surface tension forces driving the brazing and soldering processes on different alloys. The introduced regular surface condition consists of bimodal roughness arranged according to periodic patterns (multiscale texturing), by exploiting combination of melting, ablation and reaction with at-mosphere. The use of multistep scanning patterns to form highly anisotropic textures, and their ca-pability to influence the flow of molten metal during the wetting phase of braze joining and solder-ing is investigated in this work.