Study of dicing mechanism influence on PZT-4H composite performance

Dicing and filling is the most commonly used method to fabricate the piezoelectric composite by replacing part of the piezoelectric ceramics with the polymer. The dicing quality affects the composite performance, and the dicing mechanism is not clear now. In this study, a theoretical dicing mechanism for PZT-4H ceramics is introduced and validated by the experiments. The results show that, along the dicing depth direction, the dicing surface goes through brittle removal, hybrid of ductile and brittle removal, and pure ductile removal modes. The high wheel speed and low feed rate can help to get the low surface roughness and edge chipping size (width and height) due to the material removal mode transition. The diced kerfs are in saddle shape due to the dicing force variation and wheel vibration in different locations. The composite with high dicing surface quality and consistent size of dicing kerf has low mechanical quality factors variation. The impedance and phase angle at the resonance and anti-resonance frequencies are sharp, which indicates the perfect superposition of the energy from a different pillar. The inconsistent dicing kerf ruined the impedance and phase angle curve after superposition, which shows poor performance.