Material properties of metals and metal alloys at high temperatures are often unknown, but necessary to understand physical mechanisms for prediction and improvement of high temperature processes, such as laser beam technologies. Surface tension is an elementary property that was measured in this study above the boiling temperature of steel using a laser-induced vapor channel in a steel substrate and the extraction of the vapor channel diameter from in-situ X-ray observations.

The measurement principle is based on the pressure balance inside the keyhole, where the recoil pressure from keyhole wall vaporization works against the surface tension pressure from the surrounding melt pool. An increase in surface tension at increasing temperatures above the boiling point was measured against theoretical expectations. In order to create the keyhole shapes measured, the surface tension must increase to counterbalance the increasing recoil pressure.