Obliquely incident ion beam figuring

A new ion beam figuring (IBF) technique, obliquely incident IBF (OI-IBF), is proposed. In OI-IBF, the ion beam bombards the optical surface obliquely with an invariable incident angle instead of perpendicularly as in the normal IBF. Due to the higher removal rate in oblique incidence, the process time in OI-IBF can be significantly shortened. The removal rates at different incident angles were first tested, and then a test mirror was processed by OI-IBF. Comparison shows that in the OI-IBF technique with a 30 deg incident angle, the process time was reduced by 56.8%, while keeping the same figure correcting ability. The experimental results indicate that the OI-IBF technique is feasible and effective to improve the surface correction process efficiency. (C) The Authors. Published by SPIE under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.