Study on Micro-Crack Induced Precision Severing of Quartz Glass Chips

Abstract

It is difficult to cut hard and brittle quartz glass chips. Hence, a method involving micro-crack-induced severing along a non-crack microgroove-apex by controlling the loading rate is proposed. The objective is to realize the rapid and precision severing of the hardest quartz glass in chip materials. Firstly, micro-grinding was employed to machine smooth microgrooves of 398–565 μm in depth; then the severing force was modelled by the microgroove shape and size; finally, the severing performance of a 4-mm thick substrate was investigated experimentally. It is shown that the crack propagation occurred at the same time from the microgroove-apex and the loading point during 0.5 ms in micro-crack-induced severing. The severing efficiency is dominated by the severing time rather than the crack propagation time. When the loading rate is less than 20–60 mm/min, the dynamic severing is transferred to static severing. With increasing microgroove-apex radius, the severing force decreases to the critical severing force of about 160–180 N in the static severing, but it increases to the critical severing force in the dynamic severing. The static severing force and time are about two times and about nine times larger than the dynamic ones, respectively, but the static severing form error of 16.3 μm/mm and surface roughness of 19.7 nm are less. It is confirmed that the ideal static severing forces are identical to the experimental results. As a result, the static severing is controllable for the accurate and smooth separation of quartz glass chips in 4 s and less.

Fabrication of Micro-Structured Polymer by Micro Injection Molding Based on Precise Micro-Ground Mold Core

“…The fluid jet-array parallel machining (FJAPM) may machine smooth micro-structured surfaces, but it needed to take a lot of processing time. It was found that a dressed super-abrasive diamond grinding wheel may perform precision micro-grinding for mold core to obtain smooth micro-structured surface [15,16,17]. In order to achieve high form accuracy and surface quality of micro-structures at the micron scale, the efficient and precise micro-grinding technology was proposed to fabricate micro-grooved array structures with controllable form accuracy on the surfaces of the mold core in this work.…”

Editorial for the Special Issue on Glassy Materials Based Microdevices

“…The silicon–glass platform is at the base of the MEMS technology, which has been exploited by Knapkiewicz for the construction of high-vacuum self-pumping cells that are fully suitable for atomic spectroscopy [13]. The scribing of glass for subsequent dicing may be critical in the manufacturing of some microcircuits and microdevices; Zhang et al discuss and experimentally test a method involving micro-crack-induced severing in order to realize the rapid and precision cleaving of the hard quartz glass in chip materials [14].…”