An ion beam processing technology for complex component glass

In this work, a new polishing method of Nd3+ ions activated laser glass (Nd-glass) have been proposed, which is ion beam figuring (IBF). This study investigates the removal mechanism of IBF by analyzing the surface material composition of Nd (neodymium) glass for the first time. The correlation between surface roughness and the surface elemental content of Nd-glass is proposed. Various characterization techniques such as SEM, EDS, XPS, Raman, XRD, and AFM were employed to validate the removal mechanism of IBF. Ultimately, after six iterations of IBF at 600 V voltage, N31 and N41 Nd-glass achieved a PV range of 0.01–0.02 λ and an RMS value of approximately 0.5 nm, demonstrating the successful attainment of high-quality surface processing for Nd-glass, which ensures that IBF does not increase the surface roughness when used for precision shaping of Nd-glass.