Micro milling tool made of nano-polycrystalline diamond for precision cutting of SiC

Micro milling tools made of binderless ultra-hard nano-polycrystalline diamond (NPCD) were developed to machine micro-textured or structured surfaces on silicon carbide (SiC) molds. Many cutting edges were fabricated three-dimensionally on the NPCD tool edges using a laser. The NPCD consists of very fine grains having a length of several tens of nano-meters and is harder and more thermally stable. During the cutting experiments of SiC, it was demonstrated that the tool wear in NPCD was extremely small compared with a single crystal diamond and a micro-textured surface with very fine textures was created on the SiC mold in ductile mode.