High-precision optical component manufacturing by ion beam machining tools with ultra-high material removal resolution and dynamically adjustable removal efficiency is important in various industries. In this paper, we propose a low-energy pulsed ion beam (LPIB) technology that can obtain a single pulse with high-resolution material removal by adjusting the pulse frequency and duty cycle, and enable the dynamic adjustment of the removal efficiency. The pulse frequency is 1–100 Hz, and the duty cycle is 0–100%. For monocrystalline silicon, the pulse frequency and duty cycle are set to 100 Hz and 1%, respectively; thus, the single-shot pulse depth removal resolution of material is 6.7 × 10−4 nm, which means every 21 pulses can remove one silicon atom layer. Compared with IBF, where the removal resolution of the maximum depth is about 0.01 nm, the controllable resolution is one to two orders of magnitude higher. There is a linear relationship between the removal efficiency of the pulsed ion beam removal function and the pulse duty ratio. The material removal of a single pulse can be adjusted in real time by adjusting the pulse duty cycle and frequency. Owing to its high resolution and wide adjustable removal efficiency, LPIB has broad application prospects in the field of sub-nano-precision surface modification, quality tuning of inertial resonant devices, and so on. This technology is expected to advance surface processing and ultra-precision manufacturing.

The continuous phase plate (CPP) provides excellent beam smoothing and shaping impacts in the inertial confinement fusion application. However, due to the features of its dispersion, its surface gradient is frequently too large (>2 μm/cm) to process. When machining a large gradient surface with continuous ion beam figuring (IBF), the acceleration of the machine motion axis cannot fulfill the appropriate requirements, and the machining efficiency is further influenced by the unavoidable extra removal layer. The pulsed ion beam (PIB) discretizes the ion beam by incorporating frequency-domain parameters, resulting in a pulsed beam with a controlled pulse width and frequency and avoiding the extra removal layer. This research evaluates the processing convergence ability of IBF and PIB for the large gradient surface using simulation and experiment. The findings reveal that PIB offers obvious advantages under the same beam diameter. Compared with the convergence ratio (γ = 2.02) and residuals (RMS = 184.36 nm) of IBF, the residuals (RMS = 27.48 nm) of PIB are smaller, and the convergence ratio (γ = 8.47) is higher. This work demonstrates that PIB has better residual convergence in large gradient surface processing. It is expected to realize ion beam machining with a higher convergence ratio.

Ion beam sputtering is widely utilized in the area of ultra-high precision fabrication, coating, and discovering the microworld. A pulsed ion beam (PIB) can achieve higher material removal resolution while maintaining traditional ion beam removal performance and macro removal efficiency. In this paper, a 0.01 s pulse width beam is used to sputter atom layer deposition (ALD) coated samples. The nano-scale phenomenon is observed by high-resolution TEM. The results show that when the cumulative sputtering time is less than 1.7 s, the sputtering removal of solid by ion beam is accompanied by a nonlinear effect. Furthermore, the shortest time (0.05 s) and lowest thickness (0.35 nm) necessary to remove a uniform layer of material were established. The definition of its nonlinear effect under a very small removal amount guides industrial ultra-high precision machining. It reveals that PIB not only has high removal resolution on nanoscale, but can also realize high volume removal efficiency and large processing diameter at the same time. These features make PIB promising in the manufacturing of high power/energy laser optics, lithography objective lens, MEMS, and other ultra-high precision elements.

Single crystal silicon carbide (SiC), the third-generation semiconductor material, has many advantages, such as wide band gap, low thermal expansion coefficient and high thermal conductivity, etc. It has a wide application space in the field of electronic equipment. Its surface quality has great influence on the performance of electronic devices. Therefore, the ultrasmooth polishing of single crystal silicon carbide is very important. At present, the main problems of single crystal silicon carbide processing are poor surface quality and low removal efficiency. In this paper, the ultra-smooth and efficient polishing of single crystal silicon carbide materials is the main research goal. The polishing experiment is carried out by using a uniaxial polishing machine, and the computer-controlled optical shaping (CCOS) immersion polishing is introduced. To achieve super smooth and efficient polishing of single crystal silicon carbide, the corresponding polishing fluid was prepared by Fenton reaction for chemical mechanical polishing (CMP), and KMnO4 polishing fluid was also used for CMP. A series of experiments were carried out by setting different process parameters. The effects of pH value of Fenton fluid, catalyst concentration, type of polishing pad on polishing efficiency and surface roughness were studied, and the influence rules on polishing effect were summarized, so as to seek the optimal process parameters and realize ultrasmooth and low defect polishing of single crystal silicon carbide by combination.