Investigation of the tool influence function neighborhood effect in atmospheric pressure plasma processing based on an innovative reverse analysis method.

Ultra precision optical surfaces can be efficiently manufactured using a computer-controlled optical surfacing (CCOS) process. Based on the chemical reaction, atmospheric pressure plasma processing (APPP) is a promising deterministic CCOS technique and has great application prospect for the figuring processing as well as freeform generation. However, the plasma jet also works as the heat source, leading to the variation of substrate temperature field. This way, the tool influence function (TIF) is continuously changed, which leads to the nonlinear removal characteristic. Especially, it becomes much more complex when considering the neighboring dwell points, because they are thermally interacted. The conventional time-variant TIF model cannot accurately describe the practical TIF changes. In this paper, an innovative reverse analysis method is proposed to derive the practical TIF changes in APPP. First, the special problem of the TIF neighborhood effect is pointed out. The limitation of the conventional TIF model is analyzed with the assisted thermal model. Then, an innovative reverse analysis method is presented to derive the TIF changes from the practical removal, which is demonstrated with the simulation. Further, the proposed method is applied to the analysis of the TIF changes in APPP. To verify its feasibility, the experimental validation is undertaken, which proves its capability of deriving complex TIF changes.