Laser interference additive manufacturing ordered Cu microstructure

[Display omitted] •Direct laser interference lithography was explored as an additive manufacturing technique in metal microstructures.•3D ordered Cu microstructure was obtained by laser interference additive manufacturing technique.•The laser interference additive manufacturing in liquid avoids environmental pollution of metal microparticles for air. Here, we explored a novel additive manufacturing method on microscale for metal, carrying out direct laser interference lithography technique under the liquid phase. 3D ordered Cu microstructures with a spatial period of 12 μm could be obtained by this method using the nanosecond laser at the wavelength of 1064 nm with a pulse duration of 5–8 ns. Therefore, the phenomenon of the molten interconnected between Cu2O particles become obvious gradually with the increase of the laser fluence. Furthermore, the height of the microstructure can be tuned by pulse number at the constant laser fluence, which was confirmed by optical microscopy. Finally, the effective method is represented for the additive manufacturing of 3D ordered metal microstructure, which can avoid the environmental pollution by metal microparticles.