• Tribology and Lubricants
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• v.31 no.6
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• pp.287-293
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• 2015

Laser surface texturing (LST), a surface engineering modification, has been considered as one of the new processes used to improve tribological characteristics of materials by creating artificially patterned microstructure on the contact surface of mechanical components. In LST technology, the laser is optimized to obtain or manufacture the dimples with maximum precision. The micro-dimples reduce the coefficients of friction and also improve the wear resistance of materials. This study investigates the effect of dimple density is investigated. For this purpose, a ball-on-disc type tester is used with AISI 52100 bearing steel as the test material. Discs are textured with a 5% and 10% dimple density. Experimental work is performed with normal loads of 5 N, 10 N, and 15 N under a fixed speed of 150 rpm at room temperature. The effect of the textured surface is compared to that of the untextured one. Experimental results show that the textured surface yields lower friction coefficients compared to those of untextured surfaces. Specifically, the 10% dimple density textured surface shows better friction reduction behavior than the 5% dimple density textured sample, and has an 18% improvement in friction reduction compared with the untextured samples. Microscopic observation using a scanning electron microscope (SEM) shows that the major friction mechanisms of the AISI 52100 bearing steel are adhesion, plastic deformation, and ploughing.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Precision Engineering
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• v.31 no.5
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• pp.375-380
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• 2014

To enhance biocompatibility between the orthopedic implant stem and obsteoblast cells, bone-forming cells, micro-size holes are patterned in Ti plate surface. Initially, the house built laser power stabilization system is applied to the laser micro patterning machine to convince repeatable result. Various pulse widths are irradiated Ti plate and relationship between diameters of patterned holes and pulsed width is derived. Effect of multi pulse is observed and optimal pulse number is considered to avoid heat affected zone. After MG-63 osbeoblast cells are cultured, micro patterned Ti plates are compared with control plates. In SEM image, cells are well aligned and aggregation is observed in both 60, and $100{\mu}m$ patterned plates. Finally, free form surface stem model is prepared to test micro hole patterning.

• Proceedings of the KSME Conference
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• 2008.11a
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• pp.193-197
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• 2008

Array of micro-dimple on polyoxymethylene (POM) surface was fabricated using Q-switched Nd:YAG laser and its characteristics were studied in terms of heat affected zone (HAZ), dimple geometry, and the effect of specimen surface roughness. Process parameters such as lamp current, process time, and the stream of air in order to minimize HAZ and flow of molten polymer into cavity were extensively studied in this work. Dimple geometry was further investigated by 3-D optical microscopy to provide deep insight into morphological analysis near the dimples. This paper also presents the applicapability of micro-dimples in polymeric tribological system, such as a thrust bearing. Micro-dimples were expected to provide low coefficient of friction and enhanced lubricity at the sliding interface.

• Korean Journal of Materials Research
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• v.27 no.4
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• pp.211-215
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• 2017

Reactive Ion Etching (RIE) and wet etching are employed in existing texturing processes to fabricate solar cells. Laser etching is used for particular purposes such as selective etching for grooves. However, such processes require a higher level of cost and longer processing time and those factors affect the unit cost of each process of fabricating solar cells. As a way to reduce the unit cost of this process of making solar cells, an atmospheric plasma source will be employed in this study for the texturing of crystalline silicon wafers. In this study, we produced the atmospheric plasma source and examined its basic properties. Then, using the prepared atmospheric plasma source, we performed the texturing process of crystalline silicon wafers. The results obtained from texturing processes employing the atmospheric plasma source and employing RIE were examined and compared with each other. The average reflectance of the specimens obtained from the atmospheric plasma texturing process was 7.88 %, while that of specimens obtained from the texturing process employing RIE was 8.04 %. Surface morphologies of textured wafers were examined and measured through Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) and similar shapes of reactive ion etched wafers were found. The Power Conversion Efficiencies (PCE) of the solar cells manufactured through each process were 16.97 % (atmospheric plasma texturing) and 16.29 % (RIE texturing).

• Korean Journal of Materials Research
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• v.20 no.12
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• pp.649-653
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• 2010

In this paper, double texturization of multi crystalline silicon solar cells was studied with laser and reactive ion etching (RIE). In the case of multi crystalline silicon wafers, chemical etching has problems in producing a uniform surface texture. Thus various etching methods such as laser and dry texturization have been studied for multi crystalline silicon wafers. In this study, laser texturization with an Nd:$YVO_4$ green laser was performed first to get the proper hole spacing and $300{\mu}m$ was found to be the most proper value. Laser texturization on crystalline silicon wafers was followed by damage removal in acid solution and RIE to achieve double texturization. This study showed that double texturization on multi crystalline silicon wafers with laser firing and RIE resulted in lower reflectance, higher quantum yield and better efficiency than that process without RIE. However, RIE formed sharp structures on the silicon wafer surfaces, which resulted in 0.8% decrease of fill factor at solar cell characterization. While chemical etching makes it difficult to obtain a uniform surface texture for multi crystalline silicon solar cells, the process of double texturization with laser and RIE yields a uniform surface structure, diminished reflectance, and improved efficiency. This finding lays the foundation for the study of low-cost, high efficiency multi crystalline silicon solar cells.

• Tribology and Lubricants
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• v.38 no.6
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• pp.261-266
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• 2022

Notably, laser surface patterning facilitates tribological applications under lubricated sliding contacts. Consequently, a special pattern that can reduce the coefficient of friction under contact is considered necessary for improved machine efficiency. However, inappropriate pattern designs produce higher friction coefficients and cannot reduce friction. In this study, we use cast iron pins as specimens to investigate their friction and wear characteristics. Moreover, we experimentally investigate the correlation between the friction reduction effect and the design of groove crosshatch patterns fabricated with various angles and widths. We conduct a friction test using a pin-on-disc type tribometer under grease lubrication to study the friction reduction effect of the specimens, and we observe that the average coefficient of friction changes with the crosshatch angle and width. The experiment reveals that grooved crosshatch specimens with a crosshatch angle of 135°maximize friction reduction. The coefficient of friction of the groove specimens with a width of 120 ㎛ is lower than that of the specimens with a width of 200?. The friction reduction effect of the width of the groove is attributed to the density of the groove pattern. Thus, grooved crosshatch patterns can be designed to maximize friction reduction, and the friction property of a grooved crosshatch pattern is found to be related to its width and angle.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Surface Engineering Conference
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• 2016.11a
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• pp.118.1-118.1
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• 2016

The laser surface modification has been reported for its functional applications for improving tribological performance, wear resistance, hardness, and corrosion property. In most of these applications, continuous wave lasers and pulsed lasers were used for surface melting, cladding, alloying. Since flexibility in processing, refinement of microstructure and controlling the surface properties, technology utilizing lasers has been used in a number of fields. Especially, femtosecond laser has great benefits compared with other lasers because its pulsed width is much shorter than characteristic time of thermal diffusion, which leads to diminish heat affected zone. Moreover, laser surface engineering has been highlighted as an effective tool for micro/nano structuring of materials in the bio application field. In this study, we applied femtosecond and nanosecond pulsed laser to treat biometals, such as Mg, Mg alloy, and NiTi alloy, by heating to improve corrosion properties and functionalize their surface controlling cell response as implantable biomedical devices.

• Journal of Mechanical Science and Technology
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• v.14 no.7
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• pp.744-751
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• 2000

To achieve lower flying height for high areal recording density, the laser zone texturing of the disk needs to be designed to reduce glide height. One problem of the laser bump design is that the regular laser bump pattern often produces glide resonance phenomenon, which leads to failure of the glide height test. However, it was found in this study that glide resonance is an intrinsic problem of the glide head used and resonance phenomenon depends on the type of the head slider, that is, the natural frequency of the slider body. Therefore, higher glide height or glide failure caused by glide resonance does not lead to head/media interface problem in the real drive operating conditions in which the data head is used. Pseudo-random bump pattern greatly reduces the glide resonance. Smaller bump pitch will also help to reduce the glide resonance. However, as bump spacing becomes smaller, glide height will be increased due to increased air pressure developed around the bumps. Lowering bump height is the most effect way to reduce glide avalanche.

• Tribology and Lubricants
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• v.37 no.3
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• pp.106-111
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• 2021

There are several studies on reducing the friction that occurs on the relative sliding contact surface of moving parts under extreme environments. In particular, a solid lubricated bearing is studied to solve the tribological problem with friction reduction and durability parts using solid lubricants (lead or silver) in a vacuum atmosphere. Galinstan is mainly used as a liquid metal lubricant, but it is inevitable to have limited tribological applications owing to its high coefficient of friction. Many researchers work on surface texturing for surface modification and precision processing methods. To increase durability and low friction, DLC coating with hydrophobicity is applied on the contact surface texture. Therefore, using an untextured specimen, a dimple specimen, and a DLC-coated dimple specimen under liquid metal lubrication, this paper presents the following experimental sliding friction characteristics in the sliding friction test. 1) The average coefficient of friction of the DLC-coated dimple specimen and dimple specimen are lower compared to that of a non-patterned specimen. 2) In the DLC-coated dimple specimens, the average coefficient of friction changes according to the change in the dimple density. 3) DLC-coated dimple specimens with a density of 12.5 have the lowest average coefficient of friction under 41.6 N of normal load and 143.3 RPM.

• 한국전산유체공학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2009.04a
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• pp.363-367
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• 2009

Recently, the manufacturing of micro-cavity by means of laser surface texturing (LST) technique and low friction study by the LST have been in great progress. Most of current works have been dealing with the effect of cavity on friction and wear. The main objective of the present study was to investigate numerically two-dimensional lubrication characteristics of micro-dimple shapes fabricated on solid surfaces, and this study utilized the commercial CFD code (Fluent V.6.3). For the evaluation, preliminary simulation was conducted and numerical predictions were compared with the analytic solution obtained from the Reynolds's equation. Mainly, the present study investigated the influence of dimple depth, pattern shapes, and film thickness on lubrication characteristics related to the reduction of friction. It is found that the existence of micro-dimpled surface makes it possible to substantially reduce the friction forces exerted on the surfaces. In particular, substantial decrease in shear stresses was observed as the lubricant film thickness decreases. For instance, in the case of the film thickness of 0.01 mm, the estimated shear stress decreases up to about 40%. It indicates that the film thickness would be important factor in designing the micro-dimpled surfaces. Furthermore, it was observed that such a optimum dimple depth would be present because the dimple depth larger than the optimum value did no longer affect the reduction in shear stresses.