Complex miniaturized components with high form accuracy will play key roles in the future development of many products, as they provide portability, disposability, lower material consumption in production, low power consumption during operation and higher heat transfer due to their very high surface-to-volume ratio. Given the high market demand for such micro and nano featured components, different manufacturing methods have been developed for their fabrication. The common technologies in micro/nano fabrication are photolithography, electron beam lithography and other semiconductor processing techniques.

Although these methods are capable of fabricating micro/nano structures with a resolution of less than a few nanometers, the shortcomings associated with these methods are, production costs for customized products, limited material choices, necessitate the development of other fabricating techniques. An atomic force microscope (AFM) probe based nano fabrication, has, therefore, been used to overcome some the major restrictions of the traditional processes. This technique removes material from the workpiece by engaging micro/nano size cutting tool (i.e. AFM probe) and is applicable on a wider range of materials compared to the photolithographic process.

In spite of the unique benefits of nano mechanical machining, there are also some challenges with this technique, such as size effects, burr formations, chip adhesions, fragility of tools and tool wear. Moreover, AFM based machining does not have any rotational movement, which makes fabrication of 3D features more difficult. Thus, vibration-assisted machining is introduced into AFM probe based nano mechanical machining to overcome the limitations associated with the conventional AFM scribing.

In this study, scratching tests are performed with a single crystal diamond AFM probe to investigate the cutting characteristics and model the ploughing cutting forces. Calibration of the probe for lateral force measurements is extended through the force balance method. Furthermore, vibration-assisted machining system is developed and applied to fabricate different materials to overcome material selection issue.

The novelty of this study includes the application of vibration-assisted AFM probe based nano scale machining to fabricate micro/nano scale features, calibration of an AFM by considering different factors, and the investigation of the nano scale material removal process from a different perspective.