Research on Abrasives in the Chemical Mechanical Polishing Process for Silicon Nitride Balls

Silicon nitride (Si 3N 4) has been the main material for balls in ceramic ball bearings, for its lower density, high strength, high hardness, fine thermal stability and anticorrosive, and is widely used in various fields, such as high speed and high temperature areojet engines, precision machine tools and chemical engineer machines. Silicon nitride ceramics is a kind of brittle and hard material that is difficult to machining. In the traditional finishing process of silicon nitride balls, balls are lapped by expensive diamond abrasive. The machining is inefficiency and the cost is high, but also lots of pits, scratch subsurface micro crazes and dislocations will be caused on the surface of the balls, the performance of the ball bearings would be declined seriously. In these year, a kind of new technology known as chemical mechanical polishing is introduced in the ultraprecision machining process of ceramic balls. In this technology, abrasives such as ZrO 2, CeO 2 whose hardness is close to or lower than the work material (Si 3N 4) are used to polishing the balls. In special slurry, these abrasives can chemo-mechanically react with the work material and environment (air or water) to generate softer material (SiO 2). And the resultants will be removed easily at 0.1 nm level. So the surface defects can be minimized, very smooth surface (Ra=4 nm) and fine sphericity (0.15～0.25 μm ) can be obtained, and the machining efficiency is also improved. The action mechanism of the abrasives in the chemical mechanical polishing process in finishing of silicon nitride ball will be introduced in this paper.

Experimental Research on Residual Stress in Surface of Silicon Nitride Ceramic Balls

The influence of the residual stress in surface of ceramic balls on the fatigue life is large, because the life of silicon nitride ball bearings is more sensitive to the load acted on the bearings than the life of all-steel ball bearings. In this paper, the influence of thermal stress produced in sintering and mechanical stress formed in lapping process on residual stress in surface of silicon nitride ceramic balls was discussed. The residual compress stress will be formed in the surface of silicon nitride ceramic balls after sintering. The residual tensile stress will be formed in surface of silicon nitride ceramic balls in lapping process, and the size of abrasive particle is smaller, such trend is stronger. In this paper the residual stress was measured by the xylometric measurement in which the material in surface was peeled with lapping. The distribution of residual stress in surface can be calculated with the variation in specific volume. The technological parameter with which the material was peeled by lapping was given, for minimizing the extra influence of the residual stress forming in peeling on the original residual stress in surface, the abrasive particle size would not be too small and the load impressed would not be too large. Some experimental researches on residual stress in surface of silicon nitride ceramic balls were made. The surface of silicon nitride ceramic balls presented residual compressive stress after sintering and the influence of the ball size on the residual stress is feeble. It is expected that the size of ball blank is same for achieving the same residual compressive stress in surface on balls after final machining. In lapping process, the surface of silicon nitride ceramic balls presented residual tensile stress, the larger the load which is impressed on single ball, the larger the amplitude of residual tensile stress is; the smaller the abrasive particle, the stronger the trend of plastic deformation is and the larger the amplitude of residual tensile stress is.

Effect of Ball Scribing on Power Loss Separation of Fe-3%Si Grain-oriented Silicon Steel

Power loss of Fe-3%Sigrain-oriented silicon steelwas measured after ballscribing with different spacing using a self-designed tool.Three different sections of power loss,including hysteresis loss,abnormalloss,and eddy current loss,were measured and calculated,respectively.The loss variation and ratio were analyzed based on the experimentaldata.At 1.0 T,hysteresis loss of tested steelwith scribing spacing of 8 mm descends by 8.2% compared to samples without scribing,which is similar to the totalloss variation,and abnormalloss descends by 16.8%.At 1.0 T,hysteresis loss ratio of the steelwith scribing spacing of 16 mm ascends from 55.7% to 57.9%,and eddy current loss increases from 17.4% to 24.1%,while abnormalloss descends from 26.9% to 23.7%.The experimentalresults show that the reduction of power loss after scribing is mainly due to decreasing of hysteresis loss and abnormalloss.

Production of Mono Dispersed Silicon Balls for Solar Cells by Intermittent Electromagnetic Pinch Force

A new method to produce mono dispersed silicon balls is proposed.In this method,mono dispersed droplets are formed directly from a capillary jet of molten silicon.The silicon droplets fall down in a cooling tower and they are solidified into mono dispersed balls.An electromagnetic pinch force is applied intermittently to the jet of molten silicon in order to generate fluctuations of equal interval on the surface of the jet.As the fluctuations grow,the molten silicon jet is broken up into droplets according to a frequency of the pinch force,if the frequency is lower than a critical value derived by a liner instability theory.Numerical simulation of the breakup of the capillary jet is carried out by a multiphase fluid flow analysis with an electromagnetic force analysis.The simulation results are compared with model experiments and the agreement between the two is good.