Scattering of Sludge Nanoparticles during the Polishing of Optical Materials

As a result of studying the regularities of interaction between sludge nanoparticles with polishing powder wear and lap nanoparticles during the polishing of polystyrene, polymethylmethacrylate, and polyallyl diglycol carbonate by the dispersed systems of micro- and nanopowders on the basis of ab initio calculations in compliance with the quantum scattering theory, it has been established that sludge nanoparticles are elastically scattered on wear nanoparticles. The differential scattering cross section has a maximum at scattering angles of 0° and 180° to exceed the maximum value for the other angles by 2 × 10⁴–5 × 10⁴ times. It has been shown that sludge nanoparticles move in the process of polishing along the optical resonator axis between the treated surface and the lap surface to be scattered only forward and backward. It has been established that the total scattering cross section of sludge nanoparticles exponentially grows with an increase in their concentration and essentially decreases with an increase in the size and kinetic energy of nanoparticles. When the resonator Q factor is increased from 7.9 to 105.5, the total scattering cross section of sludge nanoparticles exponentially decreases from 120.8 to 0.6 Mb. It has been demonstrated that the calculated total scattering cross sections of sludge nanoparticles correlate with a high degree of accuracy with the experimentally determined rate of material removal under polishing.