A Study on the Influence of Cutting Tool Geometry on the Temperature of the Workpiece in Nanometric Cutting of Silicon

Abstract

AbstractWith the flattening of Moore’s law, the growth rate of the consumer electronics industry is slowly decelerating. Additionally, a plethora of applications of silicon in the optics industry has resulted in a boom in its demand in the recent times. There is an inevitable need to come up with manufacturing solutions to process silicon at nanometric scales. This has given rise to the field of ultra-precision machining. Single-point diamond turning (SPDT) tools offer an advantage over other ultra-precision manufacturing techniques regarding speed and scalability. In this paper, the nanometric cutting of single-crystal silicon using a single-point diamond tool has been simulated using molecular dynamic simulation (MDS). The cutting forces experienced by the tool and the temperature of the workpiece were observed for both negative and positive rake angles and depth of cuts. Tersoff potentials were used in a large-scale atomic/molecular massively parallel simulator (LAMMPS) to simulate the machining process. It was observed that the cutting temperature of the workpiece was significantly lower for the tools with negative rake angle as compared to that obtained for positive rake angles. Additionally, it was observed that forces on negative rake angle tools are more sensitive to depth of cut compared to positive rake angle tools.KeywordsMolecular dynamicsNanometric cuttingUltra-precision machining