Literature Review II

As an active member in the surface modification field, LSPT routinely reviews technical papers published on surface modification technologies.  To share some of the information that is currently available in the community with our customers, we are continuing a website feature where we review a published article from the array of journals available and note a few key items.
The paper up for review this week is titled “Healing fatigue damage by laser shock peening for copper film.”  by X. Liu et al.  The article is available for purchase at http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0142112313000923.  Several images and the abstract can also be reviewed.
The authors investigate the use of an excimer laser in laser peening copper films targeted to the MEMS (Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems) industry.  Studies are made of both how laser peening improves the material properties over baselines values and also how laser peening after cyclic loading allows the material to have a longer total life than the undamaged laser peened samples.  This effect is what the authors refer to as the healing effect.
This article offers an interesting read for those in the MEMS industry and offers another great example of the benefits of laser shock peening, especially in new applications!