Permanent black marking of medical–grade steel alloys by means of ultrashort laser pulses
Among the already–engineered techniques that can be exploited to reproduce permanent marks on metallic medical devices, ultrafast direct laser writing (UDLW), thanks to its negligible environmental impact and straightforward industrial scalability, is bound
to rapidly dominate the labeling scene.
The peculiar dynamics of ultrashort laser–matter interactions, minimizing the detrimental thermal build–up inherently involved in the atomic excitation, may specifically trigger (depending upon the fluence regime) the development of nano–scale surface textures (whose chemical composition is only minorly affected) which act as light–trapping structures, and are able to withstand the daily harsh processing (e.g. autoclaving) required by such equipment, without needing (typically) re–passivating treatments.
Within this paper, UDLW benefits (compared to traditional DLW approaches – e.g. nanosecond laser marking), on the medical–grade steel alloys marking routine, are assessed by experimentally investigating corrosion resistance and long–term durability of the imprinted identifiers, under purposely–simulated hostile and clinical conditions.
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