Infrared (IR) thermal imaging has aroused great interest due to its wide application in medical, scientific, and military fields. Most reported approaches for regulating thermal radiation are aimed to realize IR camouflage and are not applicable to enhance thermal imaging. Here, we introduce a simple and effective method to process porous glass by femtosecond laser scanning, where distributed nanocavities and nanowires were produced, which caused improvement of the treated glass emissivity. The as-prepared sample possessed better IR thermal radiation performance but lower transmittance to visible light. We also demonstrated its applicability by placing it in different backgrounds, where the IR image temperature of laser-treated glass was closer to the actual environment, and this strategy may provide a new vision for enhanced thermal imaging.

We evaluate the effects of the holes geometry drilled by a femtosecond laser on a stainless alloy with various defocused irradiation time, which ranges from 0 min to 1 h. The laser ablation efficiency is increased by a factor of 3 when the irradiation time is elevated from 0 to 30 min. Also, the morphology of the hole is observed by a scanning electron microscope, where the result indicates that the defocused irradiation time has a significant influence on the morphology changes. The reason for such changes is discussed based on the pretreatment effect and the confined plasma plume. As an application example, the microchannel is fabricated by a femtosecond laser combined with the defocused irradiation to demonstrate the advantage of the proposed method in fabricating functional structures.

A constant elastic alloy is a widely used material with a high elastic modulus and an excellent wave velocity consistency. Different morphologies on the constant elastic alloy surface are observed through femtosecond laser irradiation. When the laser average fluence is set to 0.58 J/cm2 and 200 laser pulses, with the increasing depth of distilled water, the period of the laser-induced periodic surface structures (LIPSS) becomes shorter accordingly. The higher the ethanol concentration is, the more spot-shaped structures will be formed among the surface structures when the depth of the coverage of ethanol is 2 mm. The period of the LIPSS reaches its maximum when the concentration of ethanol is 80%.

A fused silica glass micro-channel can be formed by chemical etching after femtosecond laser irradiation, and the successful etching probability is only 48%. In order to improve the micro-channel fabrication success probability, the method of processing a high-temperature lattice by a femtosecond laser pulse train is provided. With the same pulse energy and scanning speed, the success probability can be increased to 98% by optimizing pulse delay. The enhancement is mainly caused by the nanostructure, which changes from a periodic slabs structure to some intensive and loose pore structures. In this Letter, the optimum pulse energy distribution ratio to the etching is also investigated.

We propose a high temperature-sensitive long period fiber grating (LPFG) sensor fabricated by using the femtosecond laser transversal-scanning method. The femtosecond pulses scan over the whole fiber core and some part of the cladding region; the modified regions are more extended. It is found that the LPFG-I fabricated by the transversal-scanning method shows higher temperature sensitivity and better temperature uniformity than that of LPFG-II written by the femtosecond laser point-by-point method. The LPFG-I with a temperature sensitivity of 75.96 pm/°C in the range of 25°C–400°C is measured. Moreover, in the range from 400°C to 800°C, a higher temperature sensitivity of 148.64 pm/°C and good linearity of 0.99 are achieved, while the temperature sensitivity of LPFG-II is only 95.55 pm/°C. LPFG-I exhibits better temperature characteristics, which, to the best of our knowledge, has the highest sensitivity in silica fiber temperature sensors.

The optical constants, photoluminescence properties, and resistivity of Al-Alq3 thin films prepared by the thermal co-evaporation method on a silicon substrate are studied with various Al fractions. A variable angle spectroscopic ellipsometry is employed to determine the optical constants in the wavelength from 300 to 1200 nm at incidence angles of 65°, 70°, and 75°, respectively. Both the refractive indices and extinction coefficient apparently increase with increasing Al fractions. The intensity of photoluminescence spectra gradually increases with decreasing Al fractions due to intrinsic energy level transition of Alq3 organic semiconductor in the ultraviolet wave band. The resistivity decreases from 42.1 to 3.36 Ω·cm with increasing Al fraction from 40% to 70%, resulting in a larger emission intensity in photoluminescence spectra for the 40% Al fraction sample.