Grinding and electrochemical properties of diamond dresser fabricated in a combination technique

This study introduces surface-modified diamond grits embedded into nickel micro-prominences via micro-fabrication and nickel electroforming to fabricate novel diamond dressers. Two kinds of diamond dressers with micro-columnar prominences and micro-hemispherical prominences, denoted as CPD and SPD, respectively are characterized and compared with a commercial dresser, BSD. Among them, CPD has the lowest height level of the diamond grits and the diamond height leveling is most uniform due to the columnar shape of the nickel micro-prominences. Therefore, CPD has the highest weight loss of the counterpart and the lowest diamond worn of the diamond dresser by wear tests. In addition, CPD and SPD have a higher corrosion resistance than BSD. The reason is that the nickel deposition has a higher corrosion resistance than the Ni-based alloy in chemical-mechanical-polishing slurry determined by electrochemical impedance spectroscopy and potentiodynamic polarization test. Consequently, this manufacturing process has the potential to simplify considerably the fabrication and integration of surface-modified diamond grits on pad dresser-compatible substrates.