Choung Lii Chao

Design of Protective Coatings for Glass Lens Molding

The glass molding process is considered to have a great potential for the mass production of aspherical glass lenses with high precision and low cost. However, glass molding has a serious problem of mold sticking with glass which needs to be resolved. This research investigates the interface reaction between glass and mold by high temperature wetting experiment, which provides the reference for the designing anti-stick coatings. The SUMITA K-PSK200 optical glass gobs with low Tg were used in this study. The influence of operation temperature, ambient gas, substrate materials, and thin film composition on wettability of glass at high temperature were studied. The results show that the higher the temperature, the smaller the wetting angle between glass gob and substrate could be observed. This indicates that severe interface chemical reaction occured and resulted in the loss of transparency in glass appearance. The wetting experiment in nitrogen ambient improved the sticking situation. The combination of chemically stable substrates and coatings, such as Sapphire (substrate) / GaN (film) and Glass (substrate) / Al2O3 (film) can achieve the best antistick propose. The precious metal films, such as Pt, Ir, coated on the ceramic substrates can effectively reduce the interface reaction between the glass and substrates.

Material Removal Mechanisms Involved in Rotary Ultrasonic Machining of Brittle Materials

Rotary ultrasonic machining (RUM) is considered to be a very effective and relatively accurate way to drill deep holes in brittle materials. Although brittle fracture (micro chipping) is the dominant material removal mechanism utilized by the RUM process, poor surface roughness and deep penetrated cracks are the consequence if the machining parameters are not properly controlled. To ensure the quality of the generated surface and to improve the process efficiency, efforts have been made in this study to correlate the material removal mechanisms, surface integrity and tool wear involved in the RUM process. Diamond-impregnated tools were used in the experiment and the ultrasonic vibration frequency was kept at 20 kHz. Three major material removal modes namely, impact mode, grinding mode and erosion mode were found to be the dominant removal processes at the tool tip, around the diamond wheel and around the steel sleeve respectively. It was also found that, during the grinding/erosion processes, the bonding material of the wheel was first eroded away and left big part of diamond grits well-exposed. Pull-out and/or fracture are normally the consequence of these exposed diamond grits due to the lack of support and protection.

Investigation of Thermo-Chemical Polishing of CVD Diamond Film

ZnO/Diamond structure has attracted a lot of attentions and heavy investment recently just because diamond has the capability of producing very high surface acoustic wave (around 10,000m/s). In this present study, the microwave chemical vapor deposition (CVD) method was employed to produce diamond films on silicon single crystal. Thermo-chemical polishing experiments were then conducted on the obtained diamond films. The underlying material removal mechanisms, microstructure of the machined surface and related machining conditions were also investigated. Thermo-chemical polishing was proved to be able to remove the diamond film very effectively (4.8μm deep of diamond film was removed in 30 minutes when polishing at 550oC and 5.7m/s). The material removal rate was increased with polishing speed and pressure. Higher polishing temperature would improve the chemical reaction and result in better surface finish.

Investigation of the Interfacial Reaction between Optical Glasses and Various Protective Films and Mold Materials

The glass molding process (GMP) is regarded as a very promising technique for mass producing high precision optical components such as spherical/ aspheric glass lenses and free-form optics. However, only a handful of materials can sustain the chemical reaction, mechanical stress and temperature involved in the glass molding process. Besides, almost all of these mold materials are classified as hard-to-machine materials. This makes the machining of these materials to sub-micrometer form accuracy and nanometer surface finish a rather tough and expensive task. As a result, making mold life longer has become extremely critical in the GMP industry. The interfacial chemical reaction between optical glass and mold is normally the main reason for pre-matured mold failure. This research aimed to investigate the interfacial chemical reaction between various optical glasses, different anti-stick coating designs and several mold materials. The results showed that glass composition, coating design (composition, microstructure, thickness), environment (vacuum, air or in protective gas), reaction temperature and time could all have profound effects on the interfacial chemical reaction. Based on the results, a design developed specially for certain glasses is more likely to be the viable way of optimizing the effect of the protective coating.

Study on the Surface Integrity of Micro-Ultrasonic Machined Glass-Ceramic Material

Ultrasonic machining (USM) technique has long been used for fabricating various patterns and drilling holes on brittle materials. However, the surfaces generated by USM are normally rather rough and covered by deep penetrated cracks. This has greatly limited USM being used in micro-machining and fine machining. This research aimed to study the surface integrity of the USMed surface and develop a feasible way to minimize the scattered cracks so that good surface finish could be achieved. Machining parameters such as type and concentration of abrasive particles, grit size, and feed rate were systematically investigated to check their influences on the surface obtained. A ‘multi-stage’ micro-USM process was developed in this study and surface with Ra value better than 0.2m was achieved using the proposed process.

Fabricating microstructures on CVD diamond film

Diamond has many advanced properties which may provide potential solutions to various engineering problems. This study focuses on fabricating micro-structures on CVD diamond film. A thin layer of Au or Pt together with thermal annealing process is used to form micro-masks and reactive ion etching (RIE) method was subsequently adopted in this research to etch and fabricate micro-structures. Field emission scanning electron microscope (FESEM) and micro Raman spectroscopy were used to observe and analyse the morphology and composition of the obtained microstructures. Results show that different coated materials and thickness can produce different types of micro-masks and, as a consequence, different microstructures. Depending on the micro-mask, whisker-like or pillar-like microstructures are successfully produced and, based on the micro Raman spectrum; these microstructures still retains good diamond quality.

Single-Point Diamond Turning of Plasma-Nitrided Stainless Steel

Stainless steel and other ferrous metals are normally classified as not diamond turnable for the unacceptable tool wear caused by the thermal-chemical reaction between diamond and ferrous metals. In the present research, stainless steel specimens were plasma nitrided at a relatively low temperature (<450oC) to prevent the depletion of Cr content at the austenite matrix and to give a hardened layer where Fe atoms are bonded to nitrogen atom to form γ’-Fe4N. Diamond turning experiments were subsequently carried out under the following machining conditions: single crystal diamond tool, cutting speed up to 180 m/min, cut depth up to 5μm and light mineral oil as the cutting fluid. The results showed that, given the same machining conditions, while rapid tool wear and poor surface finish were obtained when turning the as-received stainless steel, surfaces with Ra better than 3nm and no obvious tool wear were achieved when turning the plasma nitrided specimens

Study on Extending Tool Life of Micro WC Drills by Various Protective Coatings

As the trend of electronic industry is fast moving towards miniaturization, diversity, high efficiency and high throughput, the devices to be mounted onto a PCB are increasingly densely packed so are the holes needed to keep all elements in place. To effectively and economically generate so many holes of small diameter and high aspect ratio, the drilling process has to be done in a high speed manner and tool life has to be kept as long as possible. This study aimed to improve the tool life and the quality of the obtained holes by applying various hard coatings on the drills. The results showed that tool life could be effectively improved from 2500 hits to around 11000 hits at 155Krpm and 3.5m/min when proper hard coating was applied. It was found that wear of drill was resulted mainly from abrasive wear and adhesion wear. It was also showed in the research that while non-coated drills suffered serious deformation after 500 hits those coated with Al2O3 could finish 11000 hits with very limited wear land on the drills.

Thermal Stability of Al2O3 Coated Low Transition Temperature Glass

There are growing varieties of glasses available on the market for the manufacture of molded optical lenses. A glass with a low transition temperature (Tg) has the advantage of extending the service life of molding dies. However, most of the low Tg glasses have a high content of alkali metal oxides and tend to induce severe glass sticking problems. This has made the molding process of these kinds of glasses very difficult indeed. The low Tg glasses normally demonstrate poor chemical durability and scratch resistance. As a result, the yields of fabricating the glass-preforms are frequently rather low. This research tried depositing a very thin layer of aluminum oxide on various glass-preforms by a water based sol-gel process. A high temperature glass wetting experiment was carried out to investigate the high temperature interfacial reaction between the coated glass gobs and stainless steel substrate. It was found that when the uncoated glass-preforms were brought into contact with stainless steel, the contact angle decreased with increasing heating temperature and duration. Owing to the severe interfacial chemical reaction, the originally transparent glass gradually turned translucent. In the case of Al2O3 coated glass-preforms, the variation of the contact angles was very limited, which presented no sticking and no wetting behavior. No reaction products could be detected on the contact area after the wetting test. The optical transmission of those lenses molded from the coated glass-preforms exhibited no or very little changes after the molding process.

The Effect of TaN Interlayer on the Performance of Pt-Ir Protective Coatings in Glass Molding Process

The glass molding process provides great potential for mass production of precise glass optical components at low cost. The key issue for achieving a low production cost is to extend the service life of the expensive mold inserts. The precious metal based alloy is one of the coating materials for the molds which provides excellent glass anti-sticking results. However, the inter-diffusion between the WC/Co mold materials and precious metal coatings will deteriorate the coatings which needs to be resolved. It is essentially to deposit an interlayer as the diffusion barrier to improve the inter-diffusion problem. A thin layer of TaN was deposited on the WC/Co substrate as the diffusion barrier using a magnetron sputtering system, and followed by the deposition of Pt-Ir layer as the protective layer. Low Tg Glass gobs (L-BAL 42) were placed on the coated substrate to investigate inter-diffusion between the substrate and coating at high temperature. The surface interaction between the glass gobs and protective coatings was also examined. The obtained TaN and Pt-Ir multilayer had a dense nano-crystalline structure. High temperature wetting tests showed that the TaN film could effectively resist the cobalt and tungsten diffusion into the precious metal protective layer and, as a result, minimized the possibility of oxidation and interaction between glass and protective coating. The coated substrates retained a good surface finish and the glass gobs stayed fully transparent after 6 hours reaction test at 700°C.