The coupling effect of slow-rate mechanical motion on the confined etching process in electrochemical mechanical micromachining

By introducing the mechanical motion into the confined etchant layer technique (CELT), we have developed a promising ultra-precision machining method, termed as electrochemical mechanical micromachining (ECMM), for producing both regular and irregular three dimensional (3D) microstructures. It was found that there was a dramatic coupling effect between the confined etching process and the slow-rate mechanical motion because of the concentration distribution of electrogenerated etchant caused by the latter. In this article, the coupling effect was investigated systemically by comparing the etchant diffusion, etching depths and profiles in the non-confined and confined machining modes. A two-dimensional (2D) numerical simulation model was proposed to analyze the diffusion variations during the ECMM process, which is well verified by the machining experiments. The results showed that, in the confined machining mode, both the machining resolution and the perpendicularity tolerance of side faces were improved effectively. Furthermore, the theoretical modeling and numerical simulations were proved valuable to optimize the technical parameters of the ECMM process.