United States

Laser Powder Bed Fusion (LPBF) is a critical additive manufacturing process for producing complex parts with high accuracy and precision. However, LPBF faces significant challenges in increasing the process yield and printing new powders while reducing hot cracking. These challenges limit the production speed, reduce the manufacturing efficiency, and restrict the range of materials that can be used in LPBF.&lt;br&gt;
Beam shaping offers a potential solution to overcome these challenges by modifying the laser beam&#39;s intensity distribution. In this paper, we explore the application of Multi-Plane Light Conversion (MPLC) to LPBF to improve the process speed and quality. MPLC is a novel beam-shaping technique that enables the creation of complex intensity profiles by redirecting the laser beam through multiple planes of phase modulators.&lt;br&gt;
Our study demonstrates the successful application of MPLC to LPBF, enabling a significant increase in the process speed while maintaining high-quality parts. We use an appropriate ring shape for printing the inner part and a small Gaussian beam for the contour of the part. We compare the performance with no beam shaping as well as with beam shaping based on shaping within the fiber of the laser technology. Our results show that MPLC-based beam shaping improves the process yield, leading to faster printing and improved manufacturing efficiency.

ICALEO 2023

Process Speed Increase in Laser Powder Bed Fusion Thanks to Beam Shaping with Multi-Plane Light Conversion

laser-powder bed fusion

multi-plane light conversion

beam-shaping

Laser Powder Bed Fusion (LPBF) is a critical additive manufacturing process for producing complex parts with high accuracy and precision. However, LPBF faces significant challenges in increasing the process yield and printing new powders while reducing hot cracking. These challenges limit the production speed, reduce the manufacturing efficiency, and restrict the range of materials that can be used in LPBF. 
Beam shaping offers a potential solution to overcome these challenges by modifying the laser beam's intensity distribution. In this paper, we explore the application of Multi-Plane Light Conversion (MPLC) to LPBF to improve the process speed and quality. MPLC is a novel beam-shaping technique that enables the creation of complex intensity profiles by redirecting the laser beam through multiple planes of phase modulators. 
Our study demonstrates the successful application of MPLC to LPBF, enabling a significant increase in the process speed while maintaining high-quality parts. We use an appropriate ring shape for printing the inner part and a small Gaussian beam for the contour of the part. We compare the performance with no beam shaping as well as with beam shaping based on shaping within the fiber of the laser technology. Our results show that MPLC-based beam shaping improves the process yield, leading to faster printing and improved manufacturing efficiency.

technical paper

**General Chair Welcome**

![](https://assets.underline.io/markdown_image/1/image/d6e6dddc08bf2371b9136ea9c18dc5ab.png)              

Welcome to ICALEO® 2023!
	
We were excited to host the world’s leading international conference on Lasers and Electro-Optics in Chicago. The Laser has been shown to have the potential to revolutionize solutions for major global challenges like energy usage and supply, global warming, and CO2 footprint. Even the fusion energy breakthrough is based on laser technology. The conference, with peer-reviewed scientific and technical presentations, focused on the newest results in Micro Applications, Macro Applications, Additive Manufacturing, Beam Shaping and Frontiers in Laser Applications. Additionally, the Battery-Manufacturing Track gave an overview of the process combined with the newest advances in laser application results. 

The Business Session brought the business aspect and environment of the laser to the audience and the possibility to discuss with seasoned industry leaders from around the world. 

Whether this is the first time you are hearing about ICALEO or you are a longtime attendee, you will find something of interest, new ideas, and an excellent opportunity to network with other laser specialists worldwide. 

**Klaus Löffler **  
ICALEO General Chair   
Managing Director, Precitec GmbH

**What is ICALEO?**

ICALEO® brings together the brightest minds, seasoned professionals, and pioneering researchers from around the world. With a laser-focused agenda, ICALEO offers an exceptional platform to delve into the cutting-edge advancements, diverse applications, and transformative research that define lasers and electro-optics.

Participants will be immersed in a dynamic environment that fosters collaborative learning, networking, and idea exchange. Through engaging plenary presentations, technical sessions, an industry business panel, and networking events, attendees gain insights into the forefront of laser technology. From industrial applications to medical breakthroughs, additive manufacturing to materials processing, ICALEO covers the entire spectrum of laser-related disciplines. Moreover, the event serves as a launching pad for synergistic partnerships, paving the way for professionals to forge connections that shape the future of our industry.

Join us in Chicago and be part of an unparalleled gathering that challenges the boundaries of possibility within lasers and electro-optics. As we convene to share knowledge, explore innovations, and cultivate collaborations, ICALEO stands as a pivotal force driving the evolution of this transformative technology.

**Who attended?**

ICALEO is tailor-made for professionals, researchers, academics, and enthusiasts who are deeply passionate about the world of lasers and electro-optics. If you're an industry trailblazer, an academic luminary, an aspiring expert, or a postgraduate student looking to dive into the latest developments and trends, this is an event you won't want to miss.

Industrial leaders seeking to stay ahead of the curve in their fields, engineers working on laser applications, and manufacturing experts interested in additive manufacturing and materials processing will find ICALEO to be an invaluable platform. Researchers and scientists exploring the forefront of laser technology, from fundamental principles to groundbreaking applications, will also discover a wealth of knowledge and networking opportunities.

Medical professionals investigating laser-based medical advancements, entrepreneurs seeking to innovate with lasers, educators aiming to stay updated with the latest in laser education, and policy makers shaping the industry's landscape are all essential attendees. Whether you're an established expert or a rising star, the 42nd annual ICALEO promises to offer a diverse ecosystem of expertise, connections, and knowledge sharing that caters to the laser and electro-optics communities.

**Fields Represented:**

* Entrepreneurs and Innovators
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Please register for the ICALEO 2023 Conference to join the event.

ICALEO® brings together the brightest minds, seasoned professionals, and pioneering researchers from around the world. With a laser-focused agenda, ICALEO offers an exceptional platform to delve into the cutting-edge advancements, diverse applications, and transformative research that define lasers and electro-optics.

The accelerated electrification of vehicles boosts the demand for sustainable batteries with enhanced energy density. Lithium metal anodes are expected to be a key component for future generation energy storage such as solid state and Lithium sulfur batteries. Energy consumption needs to be further reduced in cell production and substituting the wet electrode processing will be a major step in this direction. As a consequence, innovations in production technologies are required for the manufacturing of future generation batteries. 
Here, we present new concepts for manufacturing of Lithium metal batteries, including coating, cutting and contacting of Lithium anodes as well as dry film processing of composite cathodes. A unique melt deposition process is applied for achieving few micrometer thin Lithium metal films on current collector foils. Further, a laser-based cutting process enables the flexible shaping of Lithium foils and coatings with high edge quality. For direct contacting of Lithium anodes to tabs a low contact resistance and high mechanical strength is achieved via Laser beam joining. Composite cathodes based on various active materials are being produced via the solvent free process DRYtraec®. All process steps are implemented in a semi-automated cell assembly line at Fraunhofer IWS for manufacturing and evaluating Lithium metal battery cells. Thus, the developed technology concepts are being demonstrated in high energy battery cell prototypes exceeding a specific energy of 400 Wh/kg.

Processing Future Generation of Battery Electrodes with Advanced Laser and Coating Technologies

This abstract and keynote speech addresses the challenges in the development of additive manufacturing (AM) using selective laser melting (SLM) technology. With this technique, AM can produce superior and sustainable parts by the application of bionic design. In the last two decades L-PBF increased it’s productivity by a factor of 200, however it still misses commercial competitiveness. One of the main current bottlenecks lies in the high production costs of more than €1000 per kilogram of manufactured 
material. These have their cause mainly in inefficient build up rates and expensive powder costs. Another constraint is the need for ensuring consistent and high-quality parts, requiring a certified quality assurance process. 
To address these challenges, we developed a project idea whose goal it is to develop an optimized AM product by integrating a ring-mode laser as well as a manufacturing monitoring system for quality assurance and faster build rates. The ultimate goal is to achieve a certified and profitable product with target costs of less than €100 per kilogram of certified material to be competitive in the market. 
The proposed solution aims to improve the efficiency of the SLM process, resulting in lower production costs and faster production rates, while maintaining consistent high-quality parts. The ring-mode laser provides more uniform energy distribution and reduces thermal gradients, improving the material properties and reducing distortion int the manufactured part. This will move the threshold for the maximum robust melting productivity by a factor of ten due to higher laser scanning speeds and an improved layer thickness. 
The planned manufacturing monitoring system which is combined with quick destructive dynamic specimen testing ensures consistent quality while detecting and correcting any defects during production. This allows the approval of static and fatigue material properties with the certified absence of pores with a diameter bigger than 0.1 mm. 
The optimized SLM process which will be developed in this project idea could enable a more cost-effective production of metal parts and reduce the entry barriers for small and medium-sized corporations. Overall, the proposed solution could enhance the metal additive manufacturing industry, enabling competitive and sustainable production of high-quality metal parts for all kinds of applications.

Profitable and Certified Metal 3D Printing

Technological developments are elementary in the production of an electric car and especially in the battery production in order to increase competitiveness. For this reason, research institutes such as the „Chair of Production Engineering of E-Mobility Components“ and the “Fraunhofer Research Institution for Battery Cell Production FFB” executing technology screenings. Based on the results of the technology screening and the requirements of the industry, process developments are carried out. In the presentation, the findings of Fraunhofer FFB’s comprehensive study analyzing the potential of laser applications in battery production will be presented. The spotlight will be placed on relevant laser applications that have been identified in battery cell production, module manufacturing, and pack assembly. The example of laser drying for electrodes is then used to illustrate the ongoing process developments.

Innovative Uses of Lasers for Advancing Battery Production

Indirect-drive Inertial Confinement Fusion (ICF) experiments on the National Ignition Facility (NIF) have, for the first time, demonstrated fusion ignition in the laboratory. This milestone occurred&nbsp;for the first time&nbsp;in an experiment conducted on December 5 th , 2022, releasing 3.15 MJ of energy from the deuterium-tritium (DT) fusion reaction using 2.05 MJ of laser energy&nbsp;for a target gain of 1.5. This talk will describe&nbsp;this and more recent ignition&nbsp;experiments, chronicle some of the important scientific and technological developments that contributed to the increase in experimental fusion energy output that occurred between 2011 and today, and the prospects of harnessing fusion in the laboratory as an energy source.

Achieving Ignition on the National Ignition Facility

ICALEO Welcome Ceremony and Opening Plenary

The spatial laser energy absorption inside the keyhole is decisive for the dynamic molten pool behaviors and the resultant weld properties in high-power laser beam welding. In this paper, a numerical simulation of the LBW process, considering the 3D transient heat transfer, fluid flow and keyhole dynamics, is implemented, in which the free surface is tracked by the volume-of-fluid algorithm. The underlying laser-material interactions i.e., the multiple reflections and Fresnel absorption, are considered by an advanced ray-tracing method based on a localized Level-Set strategy. The laser energy absorption is analyzed from a time-averaged point of view for a better statistical representation. It is found for the first time that a noticeable drop of the time-averaged laser energy absorption occurs at the focal position of the laser beam, and the rest region of the keyhole has relatively homogenous absorbed energy. This unique absorption pattern may lead to a certain keyhole instability and have a strong correlation with the detrimental narrowing phenomenon in the molten pool. The influence of the different focal positions of the laser beam on the keyhole dynamics and weld pool profile is also analyzed and compared. The obtained numerical results are compared with experimental measurements to assure the validity of the proposed model.

The Influence of the Spatial Laser Energy Absorption of the Molten Pool Dynamics In High-Power Laser Beam Welding

Today, welding of quartz glass is mainly carried out with gas torches and by hand. The use of gas torches means that a lot of energy gets lost in the actual process zone. In addition, the manual process can result in inhomogeneous weld seams. 
An automated laser process would make the quartz glass welding process more energy efficient and more repeatable. In this study, quartz glass plates up to 4.5 mm in thickness are welded together at an angle of 125° using filler materials. The purpose is to achieve a homogeneous weld (V-seam) with as few defects as possible using a lateral fiber or rod based deposition welding process. 
The main challenge is to get the melt to the contact point of the two glasses so that no air inclusions occur. A 400 µm fiber and a 1 mm rod are investigated as additional materials. The advantage of the fiber compared to the rod is that the lower area (contact point of the glasses) is easier to reach during the welding process. The disadvantage is that a very high fiber feed rate is required to fill the gap. This leads to a high consumption of filler material. Process parameters include the substrate to fiber feed ratio, laser power, spot diameter, and process gas pressure and angle. The samples are analyzed using an optical microscope and a laser confocal microscope.&nbsp;Preliminary studies have shown that comparable results can be achieved with both filler materials.

Using Fiber or Rod? - The Influence of Different Filler Materials During CO2 Laser Welding of Quartz Glass

Femtosecond lasers are now a key technology for high precision manufacturing. They offer high quality, small feature size, and can process virtually any material. However, due to the relatively small amount of ablated matter per pulse, they have so far been limited to small parts processing. The growing availability of high average power femtosecond lasers, now reaching the kiloWatt level, enables to bring the benefits of femtosecond laser micro-processing to the macro-scale. An attractive application is large area surface functionalisation. We report on new developments aimed at improving plane wings aerodynamics by femtosecond laser micro-texturing. The creation or riblets, which are grooves engraved in the direction of air flow, can lead to a reduction of up to 9% in fuel consumption and contaminants emission. Riblets have a small feature size: The pitch and height of the groove is typically on the order of a few tens of micrometers. Achieving the required precisionand processing speedover large surfaces is challenging. We report on a combination of high average power femtosecond laser and beam shaping, to enable beam splitting and square top-hat generation. We present texturing tests that demonstrate the feasibility of the propose technique. We show that changing the beam profile from circular gaussian to square top-hat significantly improves the process speed. The combination of high power laser and advanced beam shaping has the potential to enable the production of high quality surface structures for new aerospace applications.

Large Area Femtosecond Laser Surface Texturing for Improved Aerodynamic Performances

Laser surface texturing (LST) has been demonstrated to be an effective method to induce the icephobic characteristics on metallic surfaces, which can be exploited for several applications including aerospace, energy, and communication. Using femtosecond (fs) lasers, highly-repeatable multiscale surface topographies comprised of microscale patterns and self-organized micro/nanoscale features such as laser-induced periodic surface structures (LIPSS) can be fabricated. This study investigated the influence of multi-scale surface textures produced on aluminum plates by fs-LST on the anti-icing performance. Firstly, surface features with different morphologies were fabricated by varying the fs-LST process parameters such as hatch spacing, scanning speed and the number of scanning passes. Surface topography of the textures was characterized using optical profilometry and scanning electron microscopy whereas Energy Dispersive Spectroscopy was used for analyzing the chemical composition. The wettability of the surfaces was studied using static, advancing and receding contact angle measurements. Further, icephobicity evaluation was carried out using two main techniques: &nbsp;i) by measuring the freezing time delay using an optical goniometer equipped with a subzero Peltier cell and, ii) by measuring the ice adhesion strength using an ice adhesion set-up based on horizontal shear stress application. Icing analysis and ice adhesion tests indicated that optimal microscale patterns overlapped with LIPSS features effectively increase the freezing time, mostly through the existence of the Cassie-Baxter regime at the interface between ice and textured surface, with a beneficial reduction in the ice adhesion strength. These results highlight that surface texturing by fs lasers is effective in achieving icephobic surfaces.

Effect of Femtosecond Laser Textured Surface Morphology on the Icephobic Characteristics of Aluminium

GHz burst mode femtosecond (fs) laser processing that contains a series of fs laser pulse (intra-pulse) trains with a pulse interval of several hundred picoseconds, has been attracting considerable attention, since it can offer some distinct characteristics in material processing compared with the conventional fs laser irradiation scheme (single-pulse mode). Specifically, laser ablation with the GHz burst mode can be achieved higher-quality with enhanced ablation efficiency than that by the single-pulse mode. Most of the research using GHz burst mode to date has been focused on ablation of materials. The objective of this study is to examine the possibility of GHz burst mode fs laser processing for the fabrication of novel nanostructures, that is different from laser-induced periodic surface structures (LIPSS) by the conventional single-pulse mode. 
In the experiment, linearly-polarized fs laser pulses (central wavelength 1030 nm, pulse width 220 fs) were focused onto crystalline silicon and titanium surfaces. It’s well known that the single-pulse mode creates nanoripple structures on both substrates, whose direction is perpendicular to the laser polarization direction. &nbsp;Interestingly, we found that GHz burst mode fs laser pulses can form unique two-dimensional LIPSS on both substrates with periodic structures perpendicular and parallel to the laser polarization direction. The formation mechanism of 2D LIPSS is discussed and their surface properties are characterized.

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Processing Future Generation of Battery Electrodes with Advanced Laser and Coating Technologies

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Processing Future Generation of Battery Electrodes with Advanced Laser and Coating Technologies

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