Research on material removal mechanism and radial cracks during scribing single crystal gallium nitride

Abstract

A diamond conical indenter with the cone angle of 60° and a tip arc radius of 5 μm was used to perform the gradual loading scribing experiments on gallium nitride (0001) crystal plane along the (Li et al., 2019; Wang et al., 2018; Yao et al., 2020; Fang and Zhang, 2013; Feng et al., 2009; Zhang et al., 2007; Jing et al., 2007; Yonenaga et al., 2018; Nowak et al., 1999; Shimada et al., 1998) [11-20] crystal orientation, and the material removal mechanism and machining properties of gallium nitride are studied. Single crystal gallium nitride will have the surface and sub-surface damage during machining, and the study of the stress field during scribing can effectively analyze and control the surface and sub-surface damage. Therefore, the stress field for scribing gallium nitride is acquired by superposing the boussinesq field, cerruti field and sliding blister field which have been led-in anisotropy parameters. Then on the basis of the distribution of the maximum tensile stress on the scribing surface, the nucleation and initial spread angle of radial cracks under our experimental conditions are analyzed, and for gallium nitride, the more severe the brittle spalling accompanying radial crack spread is, the greater the initial spread angle of radial cracks is.