Mechanism of atomic and close-to-atomic scale cutting of monocrystalline copper

Mechanical cutting is one of promising subtractive machining processes to enable the atomic and close-to-atomic scale (ACS) manufacturing of the processed surface with atomic scale form accuracy or functional feature size. When cutting depth is decreased to ACS, minimum chip thickness could be decreased to several atomic layers and even single atomic layer. Consequently, there arises one disruptive cutting technology towards atomic and close-to-atomic scale manufacturing, i.e. ACS cutting, the next-generation cutting technology different from conventional cutting, microcutting and nanocutting. In this paper, one ACS cutting model is proposed to study the material removal mechanism at close-to-atomic scale and even atomic scale. It is postulated that chip formation in ACS cutting is conducted by shear stress-driven dislocation movement, significantly different from the shearing-dominated chip formation in conventional cutting and the extrusion-dominated chip formation in micro/nano cutting. Moreover, two kinds of sizing effects, namely, cutting edge radius effect and atomic sizing effect, would greatly influence the surface generation and material removal in ACS cutting.