Mirror finishing using laser-induced periodic surface structures

This paper proposes a mirror finishing process using laser-induced periodic surface structures. Grate-shape minute periodic structures can be formed on various kinds of materials by linearly polarized femtosecond laser pulses with low fluence that is slightly above the ablation threshold. The spacing of the periodic structures is about the same as the laser wavelength. Taking advantage of this phenomenon, a multi-edged tool made of sintered tungsten carbide can be easily obtained. A series of mirror finishing experiments using the multi-edged tool has been carried out. As a result, it has been shown that the multi-edged tool with laser-induced periodic surface structures has high performance for mirror finshing. Surface roughness finished by this processing method reaches 5nm Ra.