Abstract
The effects of impacting particles from a jet of liquid on the removal of a surface material (on the impacted workpiece) were investigated. Experimental observations show that the cross section of the material removed changed from ‘W’-shaped to ‘U’-shaped as the size of abrasive particles was increased. Comparisons between removed material profiles and particle collision distributions indicate that the particle-surface collisions are the main reason for the material removal. The deduced number of atoms removed by a single collision implies that a transition occurs in the removal mode. For nanoscale particles, the polished surface is likely to be removed in an atom-by-atom manner, possibly due to the chemisorption of the impacting particles on the impacted surface. Contrarily, for the case of microscale particles, bulk material removal produced by particle bombardment is more likely to occur. The present mechanism of material removal for particle-surface collisions is further corroborated experimentally.
Highlights
Ultra-smooth surface refers to the perfect surface with atomic-level roughness and without defects [1,2,3]
The results indicate that a transition occurs in the mode of material removal induced by particle surface collisions
The number of removed atoms by a single collision was deduced as a function of particle size and the results imply that the mode of the collision-induced material removal changes as the size of the abrasive particles increases
Summary
Ultra-smooth surface refers to the perfect surface with atomic-level roughness and without defects [1,2,3]. With the development of modern optics, information industry, and functional materials, the demand for ultra-smooth surfaces has increased. Experiments showed that the amount of material removal has a linear relationship with the abrasive concentration, and that there is no material removal (even under pressure as high as 120 MPa) by using pure water without abrasive particles [16, 21, 22].
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