A two-step surface treatment for enhanced hydroxide-catalyzed glass bonding

Hydroxide-catalyzed bonding (HCB) is a promising bonding method for quartz glass assembly to fabricate solid laser and gravitational measuring instruments. However, the mechanical and optical performance of bonded components is limited by the incompletely constructed bonding interface due to the insufficient wetting of the bonding solution. Here, we demonstrate a facile method to improve the chemical affinity of the quartz glass surface. Concretely, after a two-step scrub, the surface exhibits a good wettability of Na2SiO3 bonding solution, sufficiently enabling surface reaction and interface construction. The bonded quartz glasses can obtain a tensile strength of over 15 MPa, which is improved over 1.5 times without loss of optical properties compared with the conventional HCB method. Therefore, this study presents a facile approach to bond quartz glass, which opens more room for optical applications with bonded quartz glass.