The effect of spot overlap ratio on femtosecond laser planarization processing of SiC ceramics

•SiC surface properties changed with spot overlap ratio were analysed synthetically.•Spot overlap ratio has significant influence on depth, roughness and oxidation.•The surface residual stress converted from tensile to compressive after processing. Silicon carbide ceramics are widely used in many fields owing to their excellent mechanical properties such as good wear resistance, thermal stability, and chemical corrosion resistance. The laser planarization processing can effectively achieve the functional, practical, and engineering process, satisfying the demands of the assembly precision. Therefore, different spot overlap ratios were utilized to investigate the effect of femtosecond laser planarization processing on silicon carbide ceramic samples. Various scanning speeds and laser repetition frequencies were matched to achieve different spot overlap ratios under the premise of fixed laser incident angle and single pulse energy. Under different parameters, the ablation depth, surface roughness, surface morphology, oxidation, and residual stress were compared. The result showed that at the same spot overlap ratio, the ablation depth and surface roughness are basically maintained at a stable value despite the difference in the scanning speed and repetition rate. The surface oxidation phenomenon remarkably decreased at the spot overlap ratio less than 90%. The decrease in the overlap ratio leads to the transition of the low frequency nano-ripple and the high frequency nano-ripple, and the surface residual stress converted from tensile stress to compressive stress. Combining processing requirements with ablation quality, the parameters are divided into three parts to fit three processes based on the spot overlap ratios. The variation in the spot overlap ratios as the guidelines had good potential in guiding the parameter range selection.