Abstract: A molecular dynamics (MD) simulation is carried out to analyze the effect of cutting edge radius,cut-depth,and grinding speed on the depth of subsurface damage layers in monocrystal silicon grinding processes on an atomic scale.The results show that when the cutting edge radius decreases in the nanometric grinding process with the same cut-depth and grinding speed,the depth of the damage layers and the potential energy between the silicon atoms decrease too.Also,when the cut depth increases,both the depth of the damage layers and the potential energy between silicon atoms increase.When the grinding speed is between 20 and 200m/s,the depth of the damage layers does not change much with the increase of the grinding speed under the same cutting edge radius and cut depth conditions.This means that the MD simulation is not sensitive to changes in the grinding speed,and thus increasing the grinding speed properly can shorten the simulation time and enlarge the simulation scale.In conclusion,the subsurface damage of monocrystal silicon is mainly based on the change of the potential energy between silicon atoms,which is verified by the ultra-precision grinding and CMP experiments.

Key words: molecular dynamics, grinding, subsurface damage, monocrystal silicon