iMechanica - Cutting Mica Sheet - Comments

Thank you

Masayuki Wakamatsu — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 15:05:40 -0400

Hi Qunyang,

You are absolutely correct on the crack on the edges. I belive I can use a diamond saw at room 101. I am wrapping up mica cutting device, but if that fails, I'll try your method.

Thank you for a good suggestion.

Masa

Experiences on mica cutting

Qunyang Li — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 16:54:13 -0400

Hi, masa

I am not sure whether your problem has been solved or not. I had some experiences before on mica cutting, hope it will be usefule for you.

The problme for cutting mica mechanically is that cracks always exist along the edges. One way I found that could effectively prevent this cracking was to utilize a sandwich structure. Glue your mica sheet between two microscope cover slides using some removable or dissolvable adhesives (I used thermo-sensitive glue, it worked great). Next thing is to find a cutting tool (e.g. a diamond saw) to cut the "sandwich" into any shape you want. After cutting, simply dissolve the adhesive to remove the glasses. The mica sheet could be further cleaved if you want an atomically flat & clean surface.

Qunyang

Thanks

Masayuki Wakamatsu — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 15:46:47 -0400

Hi Mingji,

Thank you for your comments. We have a dicer at newly built nano center, but dicer won't work this case...

I came up with a simple design and should be tested as soon as machining be completed. Again, thank you for your support.

Does the silicon wafer dicer serve your purpose?

Mingji Wang — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 00:11:11 -0500

Dr. Paul Ho's lab has it.

Cutting Mica Sheet

Masayuki Wakamatsu — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 18:35:52 -0500

Hi iMechanica,

I am not sure if I can post this type of primitive questions here, but hope you wouldn't mind. I have a 1'' by 3'' mica sheet, and it needs to cut hopefully without cracks. I searched on available papers but could not find one that described how a cut with hot-wire configuration was made of. (closest call was "Platinum Nanoparticles at Mica Surfaces" by Zhiqun Lin and Steve Granick). If you have an experience on cutting mica for your research, could you please share with me about how you set up cutting tools or another simpler method? I have a platinum wire (d = 0.2mm), but do not have anything else at this moment.

Sincerely,

Masa