Colorizing pure copper surface by ultrafast laser-induced near-subwavelength ripples.

We demonstrate that the colorizing effect of angle dependence can be efficiently and conveniently achieved on the rippled surface of pure copper processed by the femtosecond laser with an out-of-focus method, which greatly improves the machining speed. Such a laser-induced colorization can occur in a wide range of laser fluence, which determines the coverage and morphological characteristics of laser-induced ripples and thus can finely tune the colorizing effect. By inspecting the colors and corresponding spectra of treated areas at different angles, the relationship between the diffracted light central wavelength and the laser-induced near-subwavelength grating is analyzed quantitatively based on the fundamental grating equation with the experimental grating parameters. The spectrum analysis indicates that for the laser fluence increasing in a suitable range, the more clarity and regularity of formed ripples should bring out a more prominent grating effect, which becomes further matching of the grating equation in a larger inspecting angle for the elimination of the influence of the diffused reflection light. In short, the study confirms that the colorizing phenomenon mainly ascribes to the grating diffraction effect of the laser-induced periodic surface ripples, which would help to enable the flexible control of the colorizing effect induced by laser processing on pure copper.