Published papers

© 2020 Elsevier Ltd Yttria stabilized zirconia (YSZ) is an attractive biomaterial with excellent properties, but its deformation mechanism under repetitive loads is still unclear. In this study, the subsurface microstructural changes of YSZ polycrystals under repetitive loading/unloading were investigated by multi-cyclic nanoindentation. Raman spectroscopy analysis revealed that a tetragonal-to-monoclinic (t-m) phase transformation occurred, and multi-cyclic indentation promoted this transformation significantly. Cross-sectional scanning transmission electron microscopy showed that monoclinic variants were extensively generated beneath the free surfaces outside the indent planes, whereas grain refinement was dominant beneath the indenter tip. In addition, load-displacement curve analysis demonstrated that the t-m phase transformation occurred during unloading rather than loading, and that the phase transformation-induced volume expansion caused an incremental change of residual indent depth. The extension of monoclinic variants was promoted by repetitive shear deformation, resulting in significant pileups, as detected by atomic force microscopy. The effect of sample surface preprocessing on indentation behaviors was also investigated. Microcracking and surface spalling were confirmed around the multi-cyclic indents made on a diamond-turned YSZ sample. Based on the experimental results, a model of subsurface microstructure distribution and evolution was established. The findings from this study help clarify the historical effects in subsurface damaging mechanism of brittle polycrystalline materials caused by cyclic tool-workpiece interactions in nanoscale mechanical processing.

© 2019 The Author(s). Published by IOP Publishing Ltd on behalf of the IMMT Precision is one of the most important aspects of manufacturing. High precision creates high quality, high performance, exchangeability, reliability, and added value for industrial products. Over the past decades, remarkable advances have been achieved in the area of high-precision manufacturing technologies, where the form accuracy approaches the nanometer level and surface roughness the atomic level. These extremely high precision manufacturing technologies enable the development of high-performance optical elements, semiconductor substrates, biomedical parts, and so on, thereby enhancing the ability of human beings to explore the macro- and microscopic mysteries and potentialities of the natural world. In this paper, state-of-the-art high-precision material removal manufacturing technologies, especially ultraprecision cutting, grinding, deterministic form correction polishing, and supersmooth polishing, are reviewed and compared with insights into their principles, methodologies, and applications. The key issues in extreme precision manufacturing that should be considered for future R&D are discussed.

© 2021 Elsevier B.V. Berkovich indenters are widely employed in nanoindentation experiments of single-crystal silicon, in molecular dynamic simulations of silicon nanoindentation, however, spherical indenters are generally employed. To close this gap, in this paper, a series of molecular dynamic simulations are conducted on (0 0 1), (1 0 1), and (1 1 1) silicon surfaces to explore the evolution of high-pressure phases. Several possible silicon phases are tracked by coordination number (CN), radial distribution function (RDF), and angular distribution function (ADF). Results show that the metastable phases and the high-pressure phases present different symmetrical patterns along different crystallographic orientations. A large amount of high-pressure phase Si-XIII, which is seldomly observed in nanoindentation using a spherical indenter, is first discovered under the Berkovich indenter, and the evolution mechanism is characterized by tracking the position transition of labeled silicon atoms. As a transition phase for high-pressure phase Si-II and Si-XIII, bct5 phase is found in the {1 1 1} [1 1 0] slip systems, which is related with slipping flatten lattice structures. Different from the phase transformation criterion for Si-II, the transformation from Si-I to Si-XIII companies with the local elastic deformation of (0 0 1) surface. The atoms in the three neighboring unit cells are compressed into a uniform long-distance ordered crystal structure. Upon indenter extraction and rapid stress releasing, the elastic deformation of the crystal surface resumes incompletely. A part of Si-XIII recovers to pristine Si-I and the rest changes into amorphous phase. The distribution of local hydrostatic pressure and von Mises stress in the phase transformation regions indicates that the concentrated hydrostatic pressure and specific stress induce this high-pressure silicon phase. This research clarifies the evolutionary process of Si-XIII phase generation and enriches fundamental understanding on the mechanisms of silicon phase transformations in nanoindentation.

© 2021 Optical Society of America under the terms of the OSA Open Access Publishing Agreement The structural coloration of glass induced by submicron structures is eco-friendly, ink-free, and has profound scientific significance. However, it is difficult to manufacture the submicron structures for glass optics due to the high hardness of glass and the miniature size of the microstructures. In this paper, the diffraction manipulation mechanism of groove shape to structural coloration and optimization theory are studied by establishing the theoretical and simulation mode. Moreover, a newly-developed axial-feed fly-cutting (AFC) technology and the PGM technology are introduced to precisely create the designed submicron V-shape grooves and structural color pattern on a Ni-P mold and then replicating them on a glass surface. Between these two kinds of typical submicron grooves that can be machined by mechanical cutting technology, it is found that the diffraction intensity and efficiency of V-shape grooves are higher than these of jagged-shape grooves, which indicates that V-shape grooves is more suitable to be used for structural coloration with high brightness. The structural color resolution is dramatically increased with the reduction of groove spacing and can be flexibly regulated by AFC, which significantly contributes to the structural coloration manufacturing. Structural pixel segments composed of submicron grooves are arranged row-by-row to form color patterns, and the letters of different colors are fabricated on the mold and transferred to the glass surface. Methods of optical diffraction manipulation, flexible manufacturing of submicron structures, and structural color image construction proposed in this paper for the production of a structural color pattern are beneficial to a wide range of fields.

© 2018 Elsevier Ltd A nanosecond pulsed Nd:YAG laser was irradiated on a boron-doped single-crystal silicon wafer with a diamond grinding finish to recover the grinding-induced subsurface damage. In order to visualize and measure the depth of the laser melted/recrystallized layer, small-angle beveled polishing was performed in pure water followed by KOH etching. It enabled the direct observation of the recrystallized region using a differential interference microscope and the measurement of its depth using a white light interferometer. Crystallinity analysis of the recrystallized region was carried out by using laser micro-Raman spectroscopy, and the dopant concentration profile was characterized by using radio frequency glow discharge optical emission spectrometry (rf-GD-OES). The results showed that the crystallinity and boron distribution in the recrystallized region changed after laser recovery. The dopant concentration becomes higher at the boundary of the recrystallized region and the bulk. This study demonstrates the possibility of boron concentration control by using suitable laser parameters.

© 2020 Elsevier B.V. Existing commercial three-dimensional (3D) printing systems based on powder bed fusion approach can normally only print a single material in each component. In this paper, functionally gradient materials (FGM) with composition variation from a copper alloy to a soda-lime glass were manufactured using a proprietary nozzle-based multi-material selective laser melting (MMSLM) system. An in situ powder mixing system was designed to mix both metal and glass powders at selective ratios and the mixed powders were dispensed with an ultrasonic vibration powder feeding system with multiple nozzles. From the cross section analysis of the gradient structures, glass proportion increased gradually from the metallic matrix composite (MMC), transition phase to ceramic matrix composite (CMC). The pure copper alloy joined the MMC part and the pure glass phase penetrated into the CMC part during laser processing, which anchored the glass phase, as the main mechanism of combining pure metal and pure glass by FGM in 3D printed parts. From results of indentation, tensile and shear tests on the gradient material samples, it showed that mechanical properties of the FGM gradually changed from ductility (metal side) to brittle (glass side). The weakest part of the FGM structure occurred at the interface between transition phase and the CMC, which was also the interface between the ductile and brittle phases.

© 2020, International Society for Nanomanufacturing and Tianjin University and Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. The use of submicron structures for structural coloration of surfaces has broad applications for color filters, projection displays, virtual reality, and anti-counterfeiting. Currently, structural color images lack high resolution due to low manufacturing accuracy. In this study, the axial-feed fly cutting (AFC) method is proposed to fabricate submicron grooves for the diffraction of visible light to create structural color images. We establish the relationship between the color information in the pixels of the original image and the parameters of the array units corresponding to the pixels. An algorithm to determine groove spacing and the tool path is established, and array units with the desired groove spacing are machined to reproduce the structural color images. The submicron grooves fabricated by AFC have high quality and good consistency. Due to the excellent diffraction performance of the machined grooves, images with high saturation and resolution can be reproduced. It is verified that images with various colors can be efficiently fabricated using the proposed method and algorithm.

© 2021 Elsevier Ltd Brittle crystalline materials have important applications in optics and optoelectronics. However, their powders are highly toxic; thus, the chips generated in material removal processes such as cutting, grinding, and polishing are harmful to human health and the environment. In this study, micro/nanoscale burnishing tests were conducted on polycrystalline zinc selenide (p-ZnSe) to explore the feasibility of high-precision surface patterning of a toxic material by local plastic deformation without chip generation. The local deformation behaviours and subsurface damage formation mechanisms were investigated under dry and oil-lubricated conditions. Two types of cracks occurred when the force exceeded a critical value: cracks along the slip planes at the groove bottom and cracks along the cleavage planes at the groove edge. Below the critical force value, however, a crack-free surface was obtained with lower surface roughness than those for diamond-turned surfaces. No phase transformation was detected after burnishing, but lattice distortion appeared in the subsurface layer. A model was developed to predict the activated slip planes by calculating the maximum Schmid factors of the slip systems, and the distribution of subsurface defects was clarified by cross-sectional direct observations. It was also found that the use of a lubricating oil could greatly reduce material pile-ups around the tool. As test pieces, microgrid patterns were fabricated by crossing and overlapping the grooves, and smooth surfaces with surface roughness of 1.85 nm Sa and 4.5 nm Sa, respectively, were achieved. The findings from this study demonstrate the feasibility of chip-free surface patterning on toxic brittle polycrystalline materials by micro/nanoscale burnishing, which is an effective alternative to cutting and grinding for the fabrication of micro structured optical elements and microfluidics.

© 2021 Elsevier B.V. An annealed high-phosphorus electroless Ni–P coating was developed as the mold material for precision glass molding. The coating with a phosphorus content of 11.6 wt% was prepared on heat-resistant stainless steel via an intermittent ultrasonic-assisted electroless plating method. The effects of annealing temperature and heating rate on phase transformation, grain size variation, and mechanical properties were investigated. An annealing temperature of 600 °C with a heating rate of 5 °C/min was determined to be the optimal choice for heat treatment. Microgrooves were machined on the coating surface. After heat treatment, the increased hardness and modulus helped the microgrooves on the coating resist thermal deformation during the PGM process. The PV value decreased from 0.58 to 0.32 μm, and the surface roughness decreased from Sa 104.5 to Sa 62.6 nm. The mold produced by heat-treated coating was beneficial for improving the forming accuracy of precision glass molding.

© 2021 The Society of Manufacturing Engineers Slow tool servo (STS) turning takes an important role in fabrication of freeform optical elements. However, in conventional STS turning, it is technologically difficult to obtain nanometer-level form accuracy due to multiple error factors such as tool trajectory errors, tool alignment errors and dynamic follow-up errors of machine tools used. In this study, a deterministic process flow was proposed where all the main error factors were comprehensively analyzed, simulated and then compensated before machining based on the feedforward method, and the workpiece form error after compensation was predicted accurately. The proposed process flow enabled achieving nanometer-level form accuracy by a single cut without the necessity of repetitive trial-and-error. To demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method, cutting tests of a two-dimensional sine wave grid were attempted on single-crystal silicon and the proposed error compensation was applied. As a result, the form error was reduced to 8 nm P–V (peak to valley) with a surface roughness of 1 nm Sa by a single cut.

© 2019 Yttria-stabilized tetragonal zirconia polycrystal (Y-TZP) is an important material for dental, biomedical, and mechanical applications. In this study, Y-TZP was cut by a single-crystal diamond tool in the micro-nanometre scale. The chip morphology and machined surface/subsurface properties under various conditions were investigated by scanning electron microscopy, Raman spectroscopy and cross-sectional transmission electron microscopy. Two factors dominating the material removal were identified: (i) crystal grain refinement and (ii) tetragonal-to-monoclinic phase transformation, the mechanisms of which were established by experiments and finite element simulations. This study provides a possible solution to the rapid fabrication of small 3D features on Y-TZP with nanometric surface roughness and an ultra-fine-grained subsurface layer.