Dynamic simulation on the temperature field of laser micro-patterning metal in the liquid

To further understand the mechanism of laser electrochemical etching metal, it is necessary to describe the temperature field induced by laser heating metal at the liquid–solid interfaces. For solving the complex problem of laser heating a metal immersed in a liquid, the thermal phenomena adjacent to the metal–liquid interface, which was induced by means of irradiating a stainless steel sample immersed in a liquid with an 808 nm semiconductor laser beam, were numerically investigated. Based on a simplified method to solve the transient explosive boiling when a continuous wave (CW) laser heating a material in a liquid, a commercial finite element analysis (FEA) code (ABAQUS) was used to directly solve and model the transient temperature fields of laser micro-patterning metal in a liquid. As known from simulation results, the simulation of laser scanning indicates that it realizes the effect of pulse laser heating owing to laser moving and liquid cooling. Moreover, laser scanning achieves the pattern at a high resolution. At the same time, the experiment phenomena also proved that the simulation results were reasonable.