High-precision molding simulation prediction of glass lens profile for a new lanthanide optical glass

Precision glass lens molding (PGLM) is a recently developed method for fabricating glass optical components with high precision in large volumes. Lanthanum optical glasses are extensively used as optical materials owing to their superior optical properties, such as high refractive index, low dispersion, and high transparency. However, the transformation temperature of currently available high refractive index glass is generally above 650 °C and poses a challenge in manufacturing ultra-hard molds, durable coatings, and high-temperature molding equipment using PGLM. In this study, a preparation method for obtaining high refractive index, low -melting -point lanthanide optical glass (B-ZLaT198) used in PGLM was developed to reduce the transformation temperature. The developed method also characterizes the glass refractive indices and thermal-mechanical properties. To achieve the high-precision prediction of a molding shape in a simulation, a viscoelastic constitutive model of glass was established based on a micro-deformation uniaxial compression creep test. Moreover, by solving the Tool-Narayanasway-Moynihan model parameters based on the specific heat capacity fitting of optical glass at different heating and cooling rates, the input parameters of the structural relaxation model (SRM) for simulation prediction of aspheric glass lens profile deviation in the annealing stage were obtained. Finally, the profile deviation of the aspheric lens was predicted using a finite element model simulation. The results showed that the simulation’s predicted profile of an aspheric lens using the SRM model was in good agreement with that of experimental molding profile. In addition, using the SRM provided a higher prediction accuracy than that of the thermal expansion model in the annealing stage. Adopting the SRM was necessary for the annealing simulations of molding pressing and also verified the accuracy of the proposed viscoelastic characterization method for calculating the thermomechanical parameters of optical glasses.