Advanced Plasma Polishing Process: Principle, Recent Applications, Challenges, and Future Scope

In current years, optical components are the most important and necessary components of making electronic chips, semiconductors, lenses, and mirrors. In those fields, the quality of the surface is very important. Micro-cracks, lattice disturbances, and other flaws are always present on the final surfaces of components manufactured in traditional contact machining methods. In order to satisfy all those drawbacks, an advanced plasma polishing process, named medium-pressure plasma polishing (MPPP) process, has been developed. It removes surface and subsurface damage while polishing of optical components. The present article focused on a comprehensive literature review of the proposed process, with principles and applications. Moreover, this article addresses the investigation of surface roughness, morphology, and chemical composition before and after the MPPP process using 3D optical profiler, FESEM, and EDX analysis, respectively. The surface roughness of fused silica has been slightly increased from initial surface roughness (Ra) 0.35 to final Ra 0.37 μm after plasma processing. Further, the result shows the morphology has been improved after processing. EDX result shows the presence of fluorine on the surface of fused silica, and it shows the reaction has been involved during processing. Moreover, the research challenges and future scope have also been discussed.