RQMP Research Seminar

Femtosecond laser micromachining of materials to engineer functional surfaces

Anne-Marie Kietzig

McGill

Nature gives many examples of sophisticated solutions to typical engineering problems. Over the past centuries we, human beings, have developed our own ways of solving these same problems, which play important roles in our modern lifestyle and industrial progress. Man-made solutions are usually more universal, but also more energy consuming and polluting than the examples given by nature. For example, nature creates superhydrophobic and water-repellent surfaces by hierarchical roughness structures. This talk illustrates how femtosecond laser micromachining can be used on common engineering materials to induce such biomimetic functionality to surfaces.