Field-emission-assisted approach to dry micro-electro-discharge machining of carbon-nanotube forests
This work investigates dry micro-electro-discharge machining (lEDM) of vertically aligned carbon nanotube (CNT) forests that are used as cathodes in the process, as opposed to conventional lEDM where the material to be machined forms the anode, toward achieving higher precision in the patterned m...
| Main Authors: | , |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
American Institute of Physics
2011
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://irep.iium.edu.my/30326/ http://irep.iium.edu.my/30326/ http://irep.iium.edu.my/30326/ http://irep.iium.edu.my/30326/1/JAP_TS_CNTforest.pdf |
| Summary: | This work investigates dry micro-electro-discharge machining (lEDM) of vertically aligned carbon
nanotube (CNT) forests that are used as cathodes in the process, as opposed to conventional lEDM
where the material to be machined forms the anode, toward achieving higher precision in the
patterned microstructures. The new configuration with the reversed polarity is observed to generate
higher discharge currents in the process, presumably due to effective field-emission from CNTs. This
effect allows the process to be performed at very low discharge energies, approximately 80�smaller
than in the conventional normal-polarity case, with the machining voltage and tolerance down to
10V and 2.5 lm, respectively, enabling high-precision high-aspect-ratio micropatterning in the
forests. The new approach is also demonstrated to make the process faster, cleaner, and more stable
than conventional processing. Spectroscopic analyses of the forests processed by reverse lEDM
show no evidence of significant crystalline deterioration or contamination in the CNTs. |
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