Ultraprecision tool-servo cutting of pure nickel for fabricating micro/nanostructure arrays

The fabrication of micro/nanostructure arrays on nickel or nickel alloy surfaces is still a challenge because of the high hardness and low thermal conductivity. Motivated by this, this study proposed the ultrapre-cision tool-servo cutting process to fabricate micro/nanostructure arrays on the nickel surfaces. Experimental results showed the micro-lens array and sawtooth-shaped nanostructure array were suc-cessfully fabricated on pure nickel surfaces. The fabrication error of the micro-lens array is<1.2%, demon-strating the high fabrication accuracy of the proposed cutting process. Furthermore, the sawtooth-shaped nanostructure array triggers the generation of different structural colors. The cyan, blue, yellow, and green with high chromaticity and high brightness were clearly observed on the pure nickel surface. The fabrication time of the sawtooth-shaped nanostructure array is 45 mins, demonstrating the high fab-rication efficiency of the proposed cutting process. This study provides a flexible and highly efficient fab-rication method to generate micro/nanostructure arrays, which could extend the application fields of nickel and its alloy to optics. (c) 2022 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).

Automated summary

This study proposed an ultraprecision tool-servo cutting process to fabricate micro/nanostructure arrays on nickel surfaces. Micro-lens array and sawtooth-shaped nanostructure array were successfully fabricated with high accuracy. The sawtooth-shaped nanostructure array exhibited structural colors. The proposed cutting process offers a flexible and highly efficient fabrication method for extending the application fields of nickel and its alloy to optics.