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Enhancing the ductile machinability of single-crystal silicon by laser-assisted diamond cutting

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Abstract

Laser-assisted diamond cutting is a promising method for the cost-effective machining of hard and brittle materials. A deep knowledge of the material removal mechanism and the attainable surface integrity is crucial to the development of this new technique. This paper focuses on the application of laser-assisted diamond cutting to single-crystal silicon to investigate key characteristics of the process. These characteristics are the critical depth of cut for ductile–brittle transition, machined surface roughness, resultant micro-cutting force, friction coefficient, temperature distribution, microstructure change, and the subsurface damage of the machined silicon. Laser-assisted diamond cutting method is compared with the conventional single-point diamond cutting method. The experimental results reveal that laser-assisted diamond cutting can enhance the silicon’s ductility and machinability by decreasing the softened material’s hardness and promoting the atomic activity in the subsurface layer. The critical depth of cut has been increased by up to 364% with laser assistance, and its degree generally increases with the increase of temperature. The friction coefficient has been decreased by up to 27.95%. The cross-sectional transmission electron microscope observation results indicate that laser-assisted diamond cutting is able to effectively inhibit the formation of the distorted layer and produce less subsurface damage of single-crystal silicon. In comparison to the conventional single-point diamond turning of single-crystal silicon, a significant improvement of surface quality has been obtained by laser-assisted diamond cutting: Sz has been reduced by 87%, and Sa has been reduced by 50%.

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Funding

Xiao Chen acknowledges the support of the National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant no. 51905195) and China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (grant no. 2017M612447). Jianguo Zhang is grateful for the National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant no. 51905194).

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Author notes

  1. Jinyang Ke and Xiao Chen contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of Digital Manufacturing Equipment & Technology, School of Mechanical Science and Engineering, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, 430074, China

    Jinyang Ke, Xiao Chen, Changlin Liu, Jianguo Zhang & Jianfeng Xu

  2. The Beijing Precision Engineering Institute for Aircraft Industry, Beijing, 100076, China

    Hui Yang

Authors
  1. Jinyang Ke
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  2. Xiao Chen
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  3. Changlin Liu
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  4. Jianguo Zhang
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  5. Hui Yang
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  6. Jianfeng Xu
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Contributions

Jinyang Ke: conceptualization, methodology, validation, formal analysis, investigation, writing—original draft, writing—review and editing, and visualization. Xiao Chen: conceptualization, methodology, formal analysis, investigation, and writing—review and editing. Changlin Liu: methodology, validation, writing—review and editing, and visualization. Jianguo Zhang: conceptualization, methodology, and writing—review and editing. Hui Yang: methodology, and writing—review and editing. Jianfeng Xu: conceptualization, investigation, resources, writing—review and editing, supervision, project administration, and funding acquisition.

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Correspondence to Jianfeng Xu.

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Ke, J., Chen, X., Liu, C. et al. Enhancing the ductile machinability of single-crystal silicon by laser-assisted diamond cutting. Int J Adv Manuf Technol 118, 3265–3282 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00170-021-08132-w

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