This Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) grant provides funding for the principal investigator to seek fundamental understanding of the glass molding process by integrating precision mold making, heat transfer and rheological modeling of glass materials. Experiments using a lab-scale glass molding apparatus and a commercial glass molding machine will be conducted to study the glass molding process and also to validate the numerical modeling of the glass molding process to determine the optimal optical design, molding temperature, molding speed and annealing rate. The proposed research will be integrated with the principal investigators academic activities in teaching manufacturing courses. The research activities will be exciting and accessible to graduate and undergraduate students, thereby providing a compelling classroom experience through demonstrations and presentations.
If successful, the results of this research will lead to improvement in design of the glass molding process. The primary goal of this research is to determine optimal glass molding parameters that will satisfy pre-defined design criteria for both macro and micro optical elements thus resulting in lower cost and high quality products. The proposed process is a net shape, high volume manufacturing method therefore it allows optical designers to design compact optical systems that were not available before. Moreover, because the use of grinding fluids and polishing compounds is eliminated, glass molding is an environmentally conscious and operator friendly process. The results from the proposed research can be integrated in optical design, fabrication and assembly technology therefore providing US companies a competitive edge and can also lead to innovations in a range of areas from telecom to biomedical applications. The cooperation between Ohio State and leading international institutions in ultraprecision manufacturing research and education will have a profound influence on the long term progress in precision engineering for our nation.
Intellectual Merit: Compression molding of precision glass lenses (glass molding thereafter) is an emerging technique that can be adopted for high volume precision glass optical elements fabrication. Glass molding process is a hot forming method in which a heated raw glass gob or blank is pressed by optically polished molds to create the finished lens shape. In this research, micro and macro glass components were molded and numerical simulations were conducted as part of investigation. Specifically different moldings parameters were compared to evaluate their effect on glass diffractive optic molding process and diffractive features molded under different conditions were also analyzed. Broader Impacts of the Results The results from the proposed project will be integrated in optical design, fabrication and assembly technology. The new process will provide US companies a competitive edge and can lead to innovations in areas from telecommunication to biomedical industry. The proposed method is a net shape process and the use of grinding fluids and polishing compounds is completely eliminated making it an environmentally conscious and operator friendly process. The cooperation between The Ohio State University and leading international institutions in high precision manufacturing research will have a profound influence on the long term progress in precision engineering for our nation. The proposed research provides cost effective manufacturing methods for waveguides, microlenses, diffractive lenses for telecommunication, and special optics for laser applications and integrated circuits. It could also provide an alternative process for lab-on-a-chip, micro channels for biomedical applications, since glass is more corrosion resistant than plastic and silicon. Overall, Three Ph.D. and one MS students have worked on this project The research results were published in 21 journal publications and presented at 20 conferences, many as invited speech. The PI, Professor Allen Yi, was promoted to associated professor with tenure at OSU in 2008 and to full professor also at OSU in 2012. Today the PI is considered as the world leading expert in compression molding of precision optics and his group’s research has been followed by many others around the world. Since he started at OSU in 2002, he has advised seven Ph.D., eight master students and one honor student to completion. Two of the Ph.D. students are faculty members today. He currently is supervising four Ph.D. and one master student. One of this Ph.D. students, Dr. Yang Chen, received Presidential Fellowship at OSU based on the research sponsored by the CAREER award (2009). This prestigious award is extremely competitive. At ISE department, Dr. Chen is the only recipient in the last 10 years. From the results of his CAREER award, the PI augmented his class, "Introduction to Precision Engineering" and also taught a new class in "Uncertainty in Precision Manufacturing".
