Fundamental Study of Direct Joining between Ceramic and Engineering Plastic Using Lasers

Abstract

Dissimilar-material welding or joining are necessary and important from a manufacturing viewpoint. Therefore, the authors have developed a laser direct joining method between metals and plastics with using a metal oxide film. In this study, the laser direct joining was applied to join ceramic of Si3N4 to engineering plastic of polyethylene terephthalate (PET), although the metal was replaced by the ceramic. Since, the ceramic is similar to metal oxide or nitride in elemental composition. The shear strength of the joints of 30 mm in width was over 3000 N, which was strong enough to elongate the base plates of 2 mm in thickness. It was confirmed that the laser direct joining process has the potential to directly produce a strong dissimilar material in a joint of a ceramic and an engineering plastic.