Research on suppressing brittle fracture and implementing ductile mode cutting for improving surface quality at silicon wafers manufacturing

Single crystal silicon is an important basic material used to manufacture electronic and photovoltaic devices. Ductile mode of diamond wire sawing is a promising method for silicon wafering in order to produce wafers with minimal surface damage. To achieve ductile mode, the correct applying of cutting parameters and careful wire design is necessary. This study investigates the scratching of monocrystalline silicon by the abrasive particles of different geometry, which simulates the material removal process in diamond wire sawing. Diamonds, crushed and spherical tungsten carbide (WC) particles served as abrasives. Experiments show that spherical abrasives enhance ductile mode cutting significantly decreasing brittle damage when compared to irregular shape particles. Spherical WC particles permit to increase the critical load and critical cut depth of ductile-to-brittle transition from 5 to 10 times. The depth of the damaged subsurface layer decreased from 5 µm to 0.2 µm due to the absence of brittle cracks. A uniform regular distribution and appropriate suitable density of abrasive particles is obligatory for cracking reduction. For that, the method of diamond particles uniform deposition with the controlled density by a polymer binder combining high modulus and adhesive capacity with good flexibility was elaborated. The method includes preliminary diamond particles fixation on a thin resin layer providing high uniformity and subsequent strong fixation by a thicker resin layer. The research on ovalization of diamond particles was performed for smoothening cutting edges. The method is based on the activation of the graphitization process at sharp edges of particles under the action of metal salts at increased temperatures.

Effect of Tool Rake Angle and Crystal Orientation on Ductile Mode Cutting of Hard/Brittle Materials

The effects of negative rake angles on the ductile mode cutting of soda glass and sapphire were studied. In addition, the machining mechanism was studied using a groove-cutting model based on the orthogonal cutting theory. It was found that the specific cutting forces in ductile mode cutting increase on both the soda glass specimen and on the sapphire specimen when the rake angle of the tool becomes negative. The difference between the experimental data and theoretical data of the specific cutting forces becomes large when the tool has a high rake angle on the negative side. This is attributed to effects of the roundness of the edge, the effects of the roundness of the nose, and the plowing mechanism, which causes plastic flow of the work material to both sides of the groove. The specific cutting force of sapphire depends on the cutting direction against the crystal orientation. The specific cutting force of sapphire depends on the cutting direction in terms of the crystal orientation. The anisotropy of the cutting force of sapphire also depends on the rake angle of the tool.