Papers by Author: Shinya Suzuki

Abstract: Plane honing machining of aluminum nitride (AlN) was investigated in this study. AlN has advantageous thermal and dielectric characteristics and is in great demand as a semiconductor mounting board or packaging parts material. However, as AlN is a sintered material, the AlN grains readily detach during machining making it difficult to obtain fine surface roughness at high efficiency. In previous studies, we have developed a new plane honing method that makes it possible to grind hard and brittle materials. In this paper, plane honing experiments of AlN were carried out using a resinoid or vitrified bond wheel. Fine surface roughness could be obtained using the resinoid bond wheel but there was low-machining efficiency due to burying and detachment of abrasives. The vitrified bond wheel, however, enabled high efficiency grinding but resulted in traces of detached AlN grains forming at the machined surface. Highly efficient mirror grinding of AlN could be achieved by using a vitrified bond wheel for semi-finishing and a resinoid bond wheel for finishing.

Abstract: In recent years, there has been a great demand for large-diameter wafers with high flatness of hard and brittle materials that are used as optical and sensor elements. To meet these demands, we have developed an ultra-precision plane honing method as a highly efficient surface finishing technique using a fixed abrasive. This technique offers good finish surface roughness, shallow subsurface damage and high machining efficiency. However, there is a need to improve the surface flatness, which is dependent on the grinding wheel surface flatness and the tilt of the spindles. In this paper, the relationship between grinding wheel surface flatness and the shape of a truer is investigated by calculating the contact length of a point on the grinding wheel with the truer. It was found that there is an optimum shape of the truer to make the grinding wheel surface flat, and the machined 3-inch glass wafer is controlled to a flatness of less than 1µm by using the optimum truer.