High Efficiency Precision Grinding of Micro-structured SiC Surface Using Laser Micro-structured Coarse-Grain Diamond Grinding Wheel

Accompanying with the extensive applications of micro-structured surfaces on hard and brittle material in MEMS and NEMS sensors, optical elements, electronic devices and medical products, efficiently fabricating of these surface has gradually become the focus of manufacturing community. Basing on precision grinding with conditioned and laser micro-structured coarse-grained diamond grinding wheel, a novel high efficiency technique for micro-structured surfaces on hard and brittle material, such as silicon carbide, was developed in this paper. Firstly, the maximum undeformed chip thickness for conditioned coarse-grained wheel and the ductile grinding of silicon carbide was theoretically and experimentally studied. Silicon carbide surface formed mainly in ductile regime was successfully achieved. And then, the strategy for micro-structuring the conditioned wheel with designed micro-structure geometry, sharp edge and small inclination angle side-wall was investigated. Finally, the linear and square micro-structured surfaces with high form accuracy and ultra-precision surface roughness were successfully and efficiently fabricated on silicon carbide by the technique developed in this paper.