Study on circular scanning for cross-scale micro/nanoscratching machining

Abstract

Large-scale scanning probe can facilitate fabricating cross-scale micro/nano structures. However, the processing of complex two-dimensional patterns usually encounters challenges including numerous machining feature points and probe jumps, which results in low efficiency, as well as poor machining quality. Therefore, a circular scanning method based on corner point extraction (CSCE) was proposed in this study for programming the probe path and reducing the number of probe jumps. Before the machining, the target structures or images were converted into raw data points through image processing, and then the data was refined by corner point extraction for obtaining the machining points. Subsequently, the machining points were arranged in the order of a circular scanning algorithm to get the probe path. Using CSCE, the probe jump was only 1 time for processing an H-shaped pattern. By comparison with the circular scanning method based on intersection point extraction (CSIE) for the H pattern, the number of machining points in CSCE was reduced from 82 to 12, and the machining time was shortened from 17.15 s to 3.17 s. Consequently, CSCE can enable efficient and high-quality fabrication of cross-scale micro/nanostructures.