Fabrication of Micro-Hole Array on Glass Material by Abrasive Jet Machining

Abstract

Brittle materials such as glasses, silicon, and silicon carbide are normally categorized as difficult to machine materials for its high hardness and brittleness. However, they have attracted more and more attentions and been playing critical roles in many scientific/engineering applications for their advanced physic/optical/electronic properties. Micro-patterns such as micro-holes (array) of various sizes and shapes are frequently required to be generated on brittle materials. Many researchers have tried different approaches such as laser ablation, ultrasonic machining, and rotary ultrasonic machining to produce micro-holes in brittle materials. This research applied abrasive jet machining to fabricate micro-holes array on glass. Efforts have been made to investigate the effect of grit-size, stand-off distance, pressure on the material removal rate and the obtained holes accuracy. Micro-hole arrays of various shapes and with characteristic dimension ranging from 0.2 mm to 2 mm are successfully produced in glass plate of 0.4 mm thickness.