Abstract
In order to improve the laser micro-machinability of borosilicate glass, the glass surface was doped with metal (silver or copper) ions by electric field-assisted solid-state ion exchange. Doped ions drifted and diffused into the glass substrate under a DC electric field. The drift-diffusion behavior of metal ions in glass was numerically analyzed using standard explicit finite-difference method. The calculated penetration depths of both silver and copper showed good agreement with experimentally measured values. However, there was a difference between measured and calculated ionic fluxes, especially for the early-stage of ion exchange. This discrepancy was likely to be caused by an imperfect initial contact between metal foil and glass substrate. Therefore, the increase in electric current path with ion exchange time was necessary to be taken into consideration. The modified calculation enabled more accurate estimation of ionic penetration depths.
