The ablation behavior and modification mechanism of SiC under different laser energy

Abstract

The laser modification pretreatment method is an effective way to address the machining difficulties of silicon carbide (SiC), a typical hard-to-machine material. Therefore, the ablation behavior and modification mechanism of SiC under different laser energy were explored in this paper. A new multi-scale model of laser irradiation SiC that couples heat transfer and fluid motion is first established. Then, a series of experiments is carried out to evaluate the model's accuracy, and the interaction between laser and SiC is discussed in detail. The results show that the dominant modification mechanism changes from coulomb explosion to multiphoton absorption, incubation effect, and heat accumulation with the laser energy increase. This leads the surface topography of SiC to transition from nanoparticle formation to disorder to a melting state. In ablative state, micro/nano porous and humps are formed at the edge of ablation groove due to surface tension, generation and rupture of bubbles, respectively. Furthermore, the surface roughness is not proportional to the laser energy due to the plasma shielding effect, and the surface roughness can be reduced by enhancing the flow of the molten material. Amorphous Si–O–C, Si and spherical SiO2 exist in deposition area, leading to SiC elastic modulus decreases from 347 GPa to 103.82 GPa, and the shear strength decreases from 20.9 GPa to 17.25 GPa. The results of this study can provide references for parameters selection and theoretical support for improving the machinability of SiC.