Dependence of brittle-to-ductile transition on crystallographic direction in diamond turning of single-crystal silicon

The objective of this paper is to show the dependence relationship between the crystallographic orientations upon brittle-to-ductile transition during diamond turning of monocrystalline silicon. Cutting tests were performed using a −5° rake angle round nose diamond tool at different machining scales. At the micrometre level, the feedrate was kept constant at 2.5micrometres per revolution (µm/r), and the depth of cut was varied from 1 to 5 µm. At the submicrometre level, the depth of cut was kept constant at 500 nm and the feedrate varied from 5 to 10 µm/r. At the micrometre level, the uncut shoulder generated with an interrupted cutting test procedure provided a quantitative measurement of the ductile-to-brittle transition. Results show that the critical chip thickness in silicon for ductile material removal reaches a maximum of 285 nm in the [100] direction and a minimum of 115 nm in the [110] direction, when the depth of cut was 5 µm. It was found that when a submicrometre depth of cut was applied, microcracks were revealed in the [110] direction, which is the softer direction in silicon. Micro Raman spectroscopy was used to estimate surface residual stress after machining. Compressive residual stress in the range 142 MPa and smooth damage free surface finish was probed in the [100] direction for a depth of cut of 5 µm, whereas residual stresses in the range 350 MPa and brittle damage was probed in the [110] direction for a depth of cut of 500 nm.