Experimental study on ultrasonic vibration-assisted grinding of quartz glass microchannel

Abstract

Microfluidic chips prepared from quartz glass are widely used in medical diagnoses, biochemical analyses, and drug screening. The performance of microfluidic chips is directly determined by the quality of the machined microchannels on high-performance quartz glass. In this study, ultrasonic vibration-assisted grinding (UVAG) is proposed to fabricate quartz glass microchannels with high efficiency and accuracy. A motion model for the trajectory of a single abrasive grain was established, and the intermittent cutting mode of a single abrasive grain was analyzed. Additionally, experiments were conducted to compare the features of UVAG with those of conventional grinding (CG) to investigate the influence of process parameters such as spindle speed, feed speed, grinding depth, and ultrasonic power on the surface roughness and morphology of the ground samples, geometric precision, edge chipping of the microchannels, and wear condition of the grinding tools. Furthermore, the UVAG process parameters were optimized. The results demonstrate that UVAG provides better machining quality and minimizes grinding tool wear. After UVAG, on average, the ground surface roughness, maximum width of edge chipping, wear volume of the grinding tool, and value of the root mean square (RMS) involving geometric precision decreased by 28.107%, 27.464%, 38.072% and 27.212%, respectively. After optimizing the process parameters of UVAG, the surface roughness of the processed quartz glass microchannels reached 0.151 μm, with a geometric precision of 6.152 μm and the maximum edge chipping width of 9.4 μm.

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Funding

National Natural Science Foundation of China(51805334)

Natural Science Foundation of Guangdong Province(2023A1515030249)

RIGHTS & PERMISSIONS

Shanghai University and Periodicals Agency of Shanghai University and Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature