Studies on the Effect of Temperature on the Photo-Induced Microactuation Effect of a Co-based FSMA System

In this work, we have studied the effect of open air annealing on photo-induced microactuation (PIMA) property of a Co–Ni–Al melt-spun FSMA ribbon sample. This is one of the alloy systems that demonstrate the special type of PIMA effect while interacting with laser. This property has opened up the scope of various laser-controlled micromechanical engineering applications. Due to this importance, a detailed study has been made to explore the applicability of this alloy in different environmental conditions, where temperature plays an important role. The correlation between microstructure and the photo-induced microactuation (PIMA) properties has also been addressed here. The variation in actuation of the alloy with different heat-treated conditions has been studied in details. Transmission electron microscopy (TEM) was used to characterize the evolved microstructure for both the as-spun and the heat-treated alloy samples. The correlation between the evolution of the structural effects and resulting degradation of the PIMA property changes was also followed systematically to understand the correlation.