Use of Monocrystalline Silicon as Tool Material for Highly Accurate Blanking of Thin Metal Foils

Journal Article · Wed May 04 00:00:00 EDT 2011 · AIP Conference Proceedings

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1063/1.3589561· OSTI ID:21516760

Hildering, Sven; Engel, Ulf; Merklein, Marion ^[1]

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1. Chair of Manufacturing Technology, University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, Egerlandstr. 13, 91058 Erlangen (Germany)

The trend towards miniaturisation of metallic mass production components combined with increased component functionality is still unbroken. Manufacturing these components by forming and blanking offers economical and ecological advantages combined with the needed accuracy. The complexity of producing tools with geometries below 50 {mu}m by conventional manufacturing methods becomes disproportional higher. Expensive serial finishing operations are required to achieve an adequate surface roughness combined with accurate geometry details. A novel approach for producing such tools is the use of advanced etching technologies for monocrystalline silicon that are well-established in the microsystems technology. High-precision vertical geometries with a width down to 5 {mu}m are possible. The present study shows a novel concept using this potential for the blanking of thin copper foils with monocrystallline silicon as a tool material. A self-contained machine-tool with compact outer dimensions was designed to avoid tensile stresses in the brittle silicon punch by an accurate, careful alignment of the punch, die and metal foil. A microscopic analysis of the monocrystalline silicon punch shows appropriate properties regarding flank angle, edge geometry and surface quality for the blanking process. Using a monocrystalline silicon punch with a width of 70 {mu}m blanking experiments on as-rolled copper foils with a thickness of 20 {mu}m demonstrate the general applicability of this material for micro production processes.

• OSTI ID: 21516760
• Journal Information: AIP Conference Proceedings, Vol. 1353, Issue 1; Conference: ESAFORM 2011: 14. international ESAFORM conference on material forming, Belfast, Northern Ireland (United Kingdom), 27-29 Apr 2011; Other Information: DOI: 10.1063/1.3589561; (c) 2011 American Institute of Physics; ISSN 0094-243X
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE
ACCURACY
ALIGNMENT
BRITTLENESS
COPPER
DIES
ETCHING
FOILS
HARDNESS
MACHINE TOOLS
MANUFACTURING
MASS
MONOCRYSTALS
ROUGHNESS
SILICON
STRESSES
SURFACES
THICKNESS
CRYSTALS
DIMENSIONS
ELEMENTS
EQUIPMENT
MECHANICAL PROPERTIES
METALS
SEMIMETALS
SURFACE FINISHING
SURFACE PROPERTIES
TOOLS
TRANSITION ELEMENTS