Fabrication of Surface Microtexture by Vibration Assisted Cutting

Abstract

mproving materials surface function by introducing nano/micro surface textures is of great interest in various fields. The authors have also achieved an improvement in the photocatalytic surface function by introducing the microcutting grooves texture on the titanium dioxide surfaces. In this report, the authors performed the vibration assisted cutting to fabricate finer surface microtextures anticipating future usage as microtexture moulds for the nanoimprinting and/or injection moulding. In the experiment, a pure copper plate was cut using a sharply pointed triangular diamond tip vibrated by a fast tool servo system in the direction of cutting depth with μm order amplitude and kHz order frequency. As a result, it was found that the periodical micro concave-convex patterns with the combinations of impressions and pileups can be obtained by the proposed method using almost the same vibration amplitude as the cutting depth. It was also achieved that a micro-textured surface with numerous concave-convex patterns less than 1 μm in height with 3 μm in pitch.