Silicon nitrides cutting performance

Rebenne, H. E., and Bhat, D. G., Effect of Diffusion Interface on Adhesion and Machining Performance of TiN-Coated Silicon-Nitride Cutting Tools, Proc. ThirdInt. Conf. on Surface Modification Technologies, Neuchatel, Switzerland (Aug., 1989)... 

In other useful applications, silicon nitride bearings have been found to offer excellent performance silicon nitride cutting tool inserts are a commercial product wear parts such as sand blast nozzles, seals, and die liners are also commercially produced the superior performance of heat exchangers has been demonstrated and there are also military applications. 

Effective machining of spheroidal irons with mixed microstructures can be performed using coated silicon nitride ceramic and CBN tools. This is due to the fact that these cutting tool materials guarantee acceptable tool life at reasonably high cutting speeds up to 400 m/min. 

The performance of an atomic force microscope critically depends on the physical characteristics of the cantilever and tip. In early AFMs, cantilevers were cut from metal foil and tips were made from crushed diamond particles. The tips were painstakingly manually glued to the cantilevers. Currently, this crude method has been replaced by semiconductor mass production methods in which integral cantilever-tip assemblies are produced by etching single chips of silicon, silicon oxide, or silicon nitride. The most common cantilever-tip assemblies in use today are micromachined from monolithic silicon as shown in Figure 21-28. As can be seen, the cantilevers and tips are remarkably small (ideally, a single atom at the tip apex). 

---