Direct laser synthesis of functional coatings

The direct laser synthesis of functional coatings employs the irradiation of materials with short intensive laser pulses in reactive atmosphere. The material is heated and plasma is ignited in the reactive atmosphere. This leads to an intensive interaction of the material with the reactive species and a coating is directly formed on the materials surface. By that functional coatings can be easily produced a fast way on steel, aluminium, and silicon by irradiation in nitrogen, methane, or even hydrogen. The influence of the processing parameters to the properties of the functional coatings will be presented for titanium nitride coating produced on titanium with the free electron laser.