High efficiency removal of single point diamond turning marks on aluminum surface by combination of ion beam sputtering and smoothing polishing

Abstract

Single point diamond turning (SPDT) is highly versatile in fabricating axially symmetric form, non-axially-symmetric form and free form surfaces. However, inevitable microstructure known as turning marks left on the surface have limited the mirror’s optical performance. Based on chemical mechanical polishing (CMP) mechanism, smoothing polishing (SP) process is believed to be an effective method to remove turning marks. However, the removal efficiency is relatively low. In this paper, based on Greenwood-Williamson (GW) theory, the factors that limit removal efficiency of SP are discussed in details. Influences of process parameters (work pressure and rotational speed) are firstly discussed. With further analysis, surface spectral characteristics are identified as the inherent factor affecting further efficiency improvement. According to theoretical analysis, the removal efficiency of isotropic surface is nearly 1.8 times higher than anisotropy surface like surface with turning marks. A high efficiency turning marks removal process combining ion beam sputtering (IBS) and SP is proposed in our research. With removal depth exceeding 100 nm, the isotropic aluminum surface can be constructed by IBS so that the efficiency of SP process can be greatly improved. Though deteriorated by IBS, the surface roughness will be rapidly reduced by SP process. Finally, experiments are conducted to verify our analysis. A 3.7 nm roughness surface without turning marks is achieved by new method while direct SP can only reach roughness of 4.3 nm with evident turning marks. Experimental results show that removal efficiency nearly doubled which matches well with the theoretical analysis. Our research not only can be used as a high efficiency turning marks removal and surface quality improvement method but also can be a new method for high precision aluminum optics fabrication.