Surface texturing on stainless steel by direct laser interference lithography

A method for the surface texturing of well-designed and high controllable micro dimple structures on stainless steel by direct laser interference lithography (DLIL) is presented. The method offers its innovation that the micro circular dimple structures can be fabricated directly by controlling the process of three-beam laser interference. Different exposure durations have been studied to achieve the optimum value of the dimple diameter and density in order to reduce the friction coefficient of stainless steel. The dry sliding test of friction coefficients were performed by mechanical tester (UMT-TriboLab) under normal loads of 15 N. The results indicate that the micro circular dimple structures with the average dimple diameter of 4.2 μm and density of 23 percent have about 77% reduction of friction coefficient compared with untreated surfaces.