Plasma polishing processes applied on optical materials: A review

Abstract

Nowadays, the surface quality of the material is crucial for industry and science. With the development of micro-electronics and optics, the demand for surface quality has become more and more rigorous, making optical surface polishing more and more critical. Plasma polishing technology is conceived as an essential tool for removing surface and subsurface damages from traditional polishing processes. The plasma processing technology is based on plasma chemical reactions and removes atomic-level materials. Plasma polishing can easily nano-finish hard-brittle materials such as ceramics, glass, crystal, fused silica, quartz, Safire, etc. The optical substrate with micro-level and nano-level surface roughness precision is in demand with the advancement in optics fabrication. The mechanical properties of super-finished optics materials are being used to fulfill the requirement of modern optics. This article discusses the processing of different types of freeform, complex and aspheric optical materials by the plasma polishing process used mainly by the optical industry. The plasma polishing devices developed in the last decade are thoroughly reviewed for their working principles, characteristics and applications. This article also examines the impact of various process parameters such as discharge power, rate of gas flow, mixed gas flow ratio and pressure on the plasma polishing process.

Effect of acid erosion on the tribological performance of surface texture prepared with laser processing

“…In recent years, some researchers tried to find out some technological methods to remove the burrs/bulges effects. Polishing technology is the most effective method for global and local planarization of the wafer, which is widely used in the manufacturing fields of LED substrates, chips and high-end integrated circuits (Chen et al , 2022; Yadav et al , 2023). Inspired by this, some tentative researches have been carried out about the burrs/bulges removing on the textured surface.…”

Parametric optimisation of plasma polishing process using response surface methodology

“…Zhang et al [3] brought down the surface roughness ( R a ) by more than 1 nm after plasma polishing and finally reached 0.63 nm, which proves the capability of atmospheric pressure plasma processing (APPP) to achieve high-quality ultra-smooth surfaces. The modern optics manufacturing industry demands glossy surfaces, which take the surface roughness to the nanometre level, and nominal surface or subsurface defects become the key features [4]. Subsurface defects are severe for brittle and hard materials, i.e.…”