Fabrication of high aspect ratio grooves on aluminium nitride by laser and chemical milling enhanced micro milling

Abstract

Aluminium nitride (AlN) ceramic is a typically difficult-to-machine material used in electronic packaging. Laser and chemical milling enhanced micro milling (LCMEM), a high-quality and efficient processing method for AlN, is proposed in this study. Rough machining is completed by repeated alternating laser ablation and chemical removal; the final finish is achieved by micro milling (MM). To achieve precise laser and chemical milling parameters based on the target structure, a laser and chemical milling (LCM) prediction model is established and verified; this can be used to predict the morphology of the grooves after LCM. The change trend of the grooves after LCM with the laser parameters is investigated. It was found that LCMEM can improve the surface quality by 60 %, and an optimal finishing surface with a surface roughness Ra value of 54 nm can be obtained when the feed per tooth is 0.4 µm/z. Lastly, this study uses LCMEM to produce a high aspect ratio groove with aspect ratio of 2.5 and depth of 1250 µm. Compared with conventional MM, LCMEM reduces the allowance of MM by 71.95 %, improves the groove accuracy, and reduces tool wear.