MAE Seminar: Digital Glass Forming of Optics, Photonics and Structural Elements

Speaker: Edward Kinzel, University of Notre Dame

Title

Digital Glass Forming of Optics, Photonics and Structural Elements

Abstract

Silicate glasses have unique properties including high transparency, low temperature sensitivity and high chemical and electrical resistance. Additive manufacturing provides the potential to create parts with complicated geometries at low production volumes, as well as opening new possibilities for integrated optomicrofluidics. Digital glass forming (DGF) describes the CO2 laser-heated, filament-fed process, which can be used to locally melt continuously fed, small-diameter glass rods or optical fiber. 3D shapes are constructed by moving a five-axis CNC stage relative to the intersection of the filament and laser beam. The heated glass is controllably deformed by loading from the workpiece and filament. For sufficient heating, surface tension and gravity can also act on the molten glass. This allows the deposition of fully dense, smooth geometries as well as free-standing structures. The deformation mechanics differentiate the DGF process from other additive techniques and open up interesting possibilities for the fabrication of different geometries. The application determines the type of filament and includes glass cane for photonics, tubing for microfluidics and optical fiber for photonics. The presentation will review the process and discuss applications to printing fluidics, photonics, optics and structural elements.

Speaker Bio

Edward Kinzel received his Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from Purdue University in 2010. His graduate work focused on laser-based micro- and nanofabrication, including selective laser sintering of thick-film electronics and near-field direct-write nanolithography. He was a postdoctoral researcher in the Infrared Systems Laboratory at the University of Central Florida and UNC Charlotte, working on the design and application of infrared antennas and their observation with near-field scanning optical microscopy. From 2012 to 2019, he was an assistant professor at Missouri University of Science and Technology. In 2019, he joined the faculty of the Department of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering at the University of Notre Dame. His current research includes laser-material interaction in additive manufacturing processes, including ultrafast laser surface-based fabrication, as well as the use of infrared antennas and metasurfaces as sensing elements. He is a senior member of SPIE and Optica.

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