Material Removal and Application by Chemical Impact Reaction in Nano-Abrasive Jet Polishing

Material removed by mechanical process inevitably causes surface or subsurface damage containing cracks, plastic scratch, residual stress or dislocations. In nano-abrasive jet polishing (NAJP) the material is removed by chemical impact reaction. The chemical impact reaction is validated by contrast experiment with traditional lap polishing process in which the material is mainly removed through mechanical process. Experiment results show the dependence of the abrasive particles on the choice of materials. Even if the abrasive particle and the workpiece are composed of similar components, the machining properties are remarkably different due to slight differences in their physical properties or crystallography etc. Plastic scratches on the sample which was polished by the traditional mechanical process are completely removed by NAJP process, and the surface root-square-mean roughness has decreased from 1.403nm to 0.611nm. The NAJP process will become a promising method for ultra precision machining method for ultrasmooth optical surface.