Scalable laser micro- and nanostructuring of mould inserts for functional injection-moulded polymer surfaces

Functional polymer surfaces with tailored wettability, antibacterial and adhesion properties are increasingly demanded across medical, packaging and consumer industries. A scalable manufacturing route—laser structuring of steel mould inserts followed by injection moulding replication—has been demonstrated, but its industrial adoption has so far been limited by the low throughput of conventional single-beam laser texturing. Here we report a selective process acceleration strategy that distinguishes between two structuring regimes and applies the most appropriate technique to each. For deep microhole drilling, throughput was increased up to 20-fold by exploiting the high repetition rate (1 MHz) of an ultrashort-pulse fibre laser in single-beam mode. For nanostructuring by laser-induced periodic surface structures (LIPSS), a line-beam shaping approach using a spatial light modulator enabled a 35-fold productivity gain, reaching processing speeds exceeding 100 cm² min⁻¹, while maintaining sub-micrometre fidelity. Replication experiments on polypropylene (PP), PA66 and ABS confirmed successful transfer of micro- and nanostructures, with PP showing the highest fidelity. Vacuum-assisted injection moulding further improved feature height by 56–283% across materials. Functional evaluation demonstrated that all laser-textured PP surfaces increased the static water contact angle relative to the untreated reference reaching values of up to ~134°. Structured PA66 surfaces reduced bacterial retention by up to 99.8% for E. coli and ~90% for S. aureus compared to unstructured controls. Lap-shear testing showed that laser textures increased the joint shear strength of PP bonded with a non-optimised adhesive by up to 30-fold. The presented approach provides a practical, coating-free route to functional polymer components that bridges the gap between laboratory-scale laser texturing and industrial injection moulding production.