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Capillary confinement by micro-textured brazing interfaces: Mechanism for enhancing aluminum joint integrity
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DOI：10.1016/j.jmatprotec.2026.119329.png)
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Abstract
En 中文
Vacuum brazing is widely used to join aluminum alloys and fabricate thin-walled, hermetically sealed aluminum functional devices because it offers low distortion and high joint quality. However, manufacturing consistency is often limited by disordered wetting and uncontrolled spreading of molten filler at elevated temperatures, which can spill beyond the intended seam and degrade neighboring functional features. In this work, an interfacial laser microtexturing strategy is proposed to impose geometry-enabled capillary confinement that regulates wettingfront evolution and the accessible spreading domain of molten filler. Parallel and grid microgroove textures are fabricated on AA6061 brazing surfaces by nanosecond laser processing. A baseline process window is established by examining how brazing temperature and clamping torque govern spreading and lap-joint response on untextured interfaces. Within this window, textured interfaces are compared in terms of confinement stability and mechanical response. The results show that microtexturing markedly reduces spreading and forms a stable confinement boundary. The underlying mechanism is attributed to the coupled action of flow guidance along groove channels and contact-line pinning induced by geometric discontinuities. Grid textures exhibit more robust confinement and higher lap-shear strength than parallel grooves. Device-level validation on an aluminum vapor chamber further shows that, under internal-pressure loading at 185 degrees C, the grid-textured interface reduces shell deformation by about 50%, indicating improved pressure stability and operational reliability. Overall, this work provides a transferable interfacial design principle and an implementable route for high-integrity vacuum brazing of thin-walled, hermetically sealed aluminum functional devices.
Keywords:
Vacuum brazing
Laser surface texturing
Capillary confinement
Contact-line pinning
Filler spreading
Journal
J
IF:
7.5
Papers:
1.6W
Citations:
4.5W
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Cited Papers