Today, industrial markets demand highly added value products offering new features at a low-cost. Bio-inspired surface structures, containing features at the nanometer/micrometer scales, offer significant commercial potential for the creation of functionalized surfaces. To this extent, technologies to modify surfaces instead of creating composites or applying coatings on surfaces can offer new industrial opportunities. The aim of the project was to structure surfaces embedding properties for industrial applications. The advantage for society behind those innovations will be the opportunity to find new properties (non-possible nowadays) in industrial products thanks to a cheap and environmental friendly method to produce new patterns/structures on material surfaces.
The LASER4FUN research programme resulted in insights and applications beyond the current state of the art through the development of new surface micro/nano-structuring/patterning methods by using emerging short pulsed and ultra-short pulsed laser technologies—i.e.Laser-Induced Periodic Surface Structures (LIPSS), Direct Laser Interference Patterning (DLIP), Direct Laser Writing (DLW) and two hybrid technologies. The research was focused on the fundamentals of the interaction of laser energy with several materials (metals, semiconductors, polymers, glasses and advanced materials). New laser-induced surface textures, and parameters to control these, were developed. Optimized laser-induced surface textures were developed for various surface functionalities for applications in the fields of e.g. tribology, aesthetics and wettability. These functionalities (will) find their application in e.g. reduced ice accretion on helicopters, less friction and therefore less wear and energy consumption in car parts, micro-fluidic medical devices in sapphire, self-cleaning surfaces, anti-bacterial surfaces of medical devices of kitchen appliances, improved osseointegration of bone implants, anti-counterfeiting patterns of valuable parts or documents, to name a few. In addition, methods, strategies and tools to allow production of these surface textured at high industrial production rates were developed.
The project created an International Training Network (ITN) for Early Stage Researchers (ESRs) in this exciting field of laser-material processing, consisting of 14 doctoral students recruited by 10 international partners with wide experience in the field: 3 academic partners: Polytechnic University of Madrid (Spain), University of Birmingham (UK) and University of Twente (Netherlands); 4 research centers: Alphanov (France), Consiglio Nazionale delle Richerche (Italy), Fraunhofer Institute (Germany) and IPF-Leibniz-Institute fur Polymerforschung Dresden (Germany); 3 industrial partners: Robert Bosch (Germany), Airbus (Germany), BSH Home Appliances (Spain). This consortium have provided support for the ESRs who were enrolled during the first year of the project and have been working for 36 months at least on their doctoral programmes. The close cooperation among multidisciplinary partners have fostered knowledge transfer to cross the Death Valley between science and the markets. Additionally, their participation in the LASER4FUN project have impacted highly the ESRs employability to knowledge-intensive companies/institutes that are the key for EU welfare.
During the project duration more than 50 publications were prepared, more than 50 dissemination events (targeting both academica, industry and the general public) took place and 27 deliverables were submitted.
