Magnetorheological finishing of IR materials

Magnetorheological finishing (MRF) is a subaperture lap, deterministic process developed at the Center for Optics Manufacturing. MRF can remove subsurface damage from an optical component while correcting figure errors and smoothing small scale microroughness. The 'standard' magnetorheological fluid for finishing of optical glasses consists of magnetic carbonyl iron and nonmagnetic cerium oxide particles in water. This composition works well for a variety of soft and hard glass types, but it does not perform adequately for certain single crystal materials and polycrystalline compounds used in IR applications. In this paper, we describe modifications to MRF and finishing experiments for LiF, ZnSe, CaF2, AMTIR-1, ZnS, MgF2, sapphire, and CVD diamond.