Shear Thickening Polishing of Quartz Glass

Qi Shao; Shixiang Duan; Lin Fu; Binghai Lyu; Ping Zhao; Julong Yuan

doi:10.3390/mi12080956

Shear Thickening Polishing of Quartz Glass

Micromachines (Basel). 2021 Aug 13;12(8):956. doi: 10.3390/mi12080956.

Authors

Qi Shao^{1

2}, Shixiang Duan^{1

2}, Lin Fu^{1

2}, Binghai Lyu^{1

2}, Ping Zhao^{1

2}, Julong Yuan^{1

2}

Affiliations

¹ College of Mechanical Engineering, Zhejiang University of Technology, Hangzhou 310014, China.
² Key Laboratory of Special Purpose Equipment and Advanced Processing Technology, Ministry of Education and Zhejiang Province, Zhejiang University of Technology, Hangzhou 310014, China.

Abstract

Quartz glass is a typical optical material. In this research, colloidal silica (SiO₂) and colloidal cerium oxide (CeO₂) are used as abrasive grains to polish quartz glass in the shear thickening polishing (STP) process. The STP method employs the shear-thickening mechanism of non-Newtonian power-law fluid to achieve high-efficiency and high-quality polishing. The different performance in material removal and surface roughness between SiO₂ and CeO₂ slurries was analyzed. The influence of the main factors including polishing speed, abrasive concentration, and pH value on the MRR, workpiece surface roughness, and the surface topography was discussed. Two different slurries can both achieve fine quartz surface in shear thickening polishing with the polishing speed 100 rpm, and pH value 8. The quartz glass surface roughness R_a decreases from 120 ± 10 to 2.3 nm in 14 minutes' polishing with 8 wt% 80 nm SiO₂ slurry, and the MRR reaches 121.6 nm/min. The quartz glass surface roughness R_a decreases from 120 ± 10 to 2.1 nm in 12 minutes polishing by 6 wt% 100 nm CeO₂ slurry and the MRR reaches 126.2 nm/min.

Keywords: colloidal cerium oxide; colloidal silica; quartz glass; shear thickening polishing.