What's it about?

A conventional polishing study was conducted with infrared material zinc sulfide with the goal of producing defect-free polished surfaces in predictable amounts of time. Utilizing the measured electro-kinetic properties of the zinc sulfide and polishing abrasives, polishing slurries were selectively altered and the resulting removal rates and surface roughness values were measured. This paper will serve as a baseline for developing an empirical model for optimizing both surface roughness and removal rate for two different types of abrasives with ZnS.

1. INTRODUCTION

The application of zinc sulfide (ZnS) and zinc selenide (ZnSe) to the field of optics dates back to the 1950’s.¹ Zinc sulfide produced by chemical vapor deposition results in a cubic, polycrystalline material that transmits in the infrared region. There are typically two types of ZnS, standard grade and multispectral ZnS.² Over the past thirty years, a few have published polishing recipes for working with ZnS and ZnSe materials and may optical shops have developed their own internal standard process, but still today as new opticians enter the scene many struggle with this material upon their first exposure.^3-5