Investigation of vibration-assisted nano-grinding of gallium nitride via molecular dynamics

The main goal of the surface machining of gallium nitride (GaN) is to obtain higher removal rate and good surface quality. Thus, we attempted to investigate the impact of the one-dimension sinusoidal assistant vibration on the nano-grinding of GaN by molecular dynamics simulations. By the comparison between the vibration-assisted nano-grinding and the conventional nano-grinding, it is found that the grinding force of the vibration-assisted nano-grinding fluctuated periodically, and the flow field of the vibration-assisted nano-grinding around the diamond abrasive was changed by the assisting vibration. Furthermore, the GaN fluidity of the vibration with period of 20 ps was better than the other condition and had a thinner sub-surface damaged layer than the conventional nano-grinding. Although the final surface quality of the vibration-assisted nano-grinding was worse than the conventional nano-grinding, it was proven that the vibration-assisted nano-grinding achieved higher removal rate and acceptable quality simultaneously by the vibration-assisted nano-grinding.