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Titanium nitride formation by a dual-stage femtosecond laser process

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Abstract

Formation of TiN by femtosecond laser processing in controlled gas atmosphere is reported. A dual-stage process was designed and aimed to first remove and restructure the native oxide layer of titanium surface through laser irradiation under an argon-controlled atmosphere, and then to maximize titanium nitride formation through an irradiation under a nitrogen reactive environment. An extensive XPS study was performed to identify and quantify laser-induced titanium surface chemistry modifications after a single-stage laser process (Ar and N2 individually), and a dual-stage laser process. The importance of each step that composes the dual-stage laser process was demonstrated and leads to the dual-stage laser process for the formation of TiO, Ti2O3 and TiN. In this study, the largest nitride formation occurs for the dual stage process with laser conditions at 4 W/1.3 J cm−2 under argon and 5 W/1.6 J cm−2 under nitrogen, yielding a total TiN composition of 8.9%. Characterization of both single-stage and dual-stage laser process-induced surface morphologies has been performed as well, leading to the observation of a wide range of hierarchical surface structures such as high-frequency ripples, grooves, protuberances and pillow-like patterns. Finally, water wettability was assessed by means of contact angle measurements on untreated titanium surface, and titanium surfaces resulting from either single-stage laser process or dual-stage laser process. Dual-stage laser process allows a transition of titanium surface, from phobic (93°) to philic (35°), making accessible both hydrophilic and chemically functionalized hierarchical surfaces.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the DOE Phase II SBIR/STTR (award number DE-SC0011851) and Starfire Industries LLC. Parts of this research were carried out in the Frederick Seitz Materials Research Laboratory Central Facilities, University of Illinois, which is partially supported by the U.S. Department of Energy under Grant nos. DEFG02-07ER46453 and DE-FG02-07ER46471.

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  1. S. Hammouti and B. Holybee are first authors of this paper.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Center for Plasma-Material Interactions, University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, 201 S Goodwin Avenue, Urbana, IL, 61801, USA

    S. Hammouti, B. Holybee, W. Zhu, J. P. Allain & D. N. Ruzic

  2. Starfire Industries, LLC, 2109 S Oak St, Champaign, IL, 61820, USA

    B. Jurczyk

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  1. S. Hammouti
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Hammouti, S., Holybee, B., Zhu, W. et al. Titanium nitride formation by a dual-stage femtosecond laser process. Appl. Phys. A 124, 411 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00339-018-1824-x

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